A deficient official documentation, undercounting the number of active waste pickers at Dhapa, and the obliviousness regarding the hazardous working conditions render the pickers “invisible.” The women waste pickers of Dhapa seem to withstand the dehumanising disposition of their work by embodying a liminal “hybrid” identity to dissociate from their corporeal and sensorial selves. This finding aims to explore how women waste pickers exercise conditional agency to circumvent oppressive conditions by creating an insulated universe, a “third space” amid the overwhelming filth where they treat the “waste” solely as a means of subsistence.
