Doing the Dirty Work

Abstract (English)

The article investigates how Turkey’s prohibitionist drug policies are used as a pretext for violent interventions in the informal recycling sector, resulting in the collective punishment of recycling workers. To explore how stigma surrounding waste work and substance use are entangled, I turn to Istanbul’s waste infrastructures, describing how material and social stigmas co-produce marginalization and lay the pathway for furthering violence towards the recyclers. The article introduces the concept of cross-stigmatization, arguing that stigma does not exist in isolation but emerges through overlapping categories such as occupation, social class, ethnicity, gender, and behaviour. I demonstrate how waste workers and people who use drugs (PWUD) are both marked as “dirty,” which reinforce the very logic of disposability that is central to justifying the state’s strategic violence towards recyclers.