Wandering Islands1: towards an archaeology of garbage-based settlements

ABSTRACT The growing rate of global inequality, on the one hand, and hyper-consumerism, particularly among higher socio-economic classes in developed countries, on the other, have resulted in the emergence of new forms of subsistence, lifestyles and settlement types where subaltern groups and populations live and work. This paper investigates the emergence of two of these kinds of settlement in Tehran, Iran, that have developed based on the intersection of two factors: garbage and undocumented migration. In these places, undocumented Afghan migrants sort and sell dry garbage. At the same time, these places shelter the workers, chiefly teenage and underage undocumented Afghan migrants. This paper is a preliminary effort to archaeologically categorize and conceptualize these garbage-based settlements. Archaeology is among the best methodologies to investigate the materiality and inequality faced by such transient subaltern groups in the short and long term. Here I discuss how several factors, beyond absolute poverty, participate in turning garbage into a livelihood and generate garbage-based settlements.