How Do Waste-Picker Families Endure? Resolving Pains and Managing Support Systems as Close Relationship “Resourcing:” A CGT with Readily Available Data...

Diego Mauricio Paucar Villacorta, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Abstract Public waste-management systems in Latin American cities are defective. However, waste-pickers take advantage of this situation and create small family-based waste-processing units. However, little is known about how these families constantly meet their needs, manage suffering or even overcome poverty. How do they get to survive in such a context? This paper presents the classic grounded theory of resourcing from close relationships, based on a secondary analysis of data produced during 2009-2011 by a grass-roots NGO. The core category of managing support systems explains how a family constantly approaches or wards off towards an ideal work system through anchoring motivations and system adjusting. The resulting actual system, however, creates pains. They have to be resolved through tolerating dependency and negotiating against deviance, which is what finally allows the family to adapt or thrive to changing economic environments. Keywords: Waste-pickers, Peru, family economy, child labor, informal economy, classic grounded theory Introduction Urban waste-pickers (also known as scavengers or recyclers) are at the background of everyday life. However, they are always at the forefront of Latin American waste-management issues (Dias & Samson, 2016; Velis, 2017). Not even Peru’s national census of 2007 speaks clearly about their characteristics, roles, or concerns. When a grass-roots advocacy project in Peru triggered executive changes over waste-picking regulations, the interests of the city government and even the country’s president about them were ignited for the first time in decades. A research team and a non-governmental organization supported recyclers during this time. They used a wide array of research designs to inform the interdisciplinary objectives of the project. The gathered data described recyclers’ work, epidemiology, and lifestyles in the oldest district of Lima. Nowadays, the recyclers’ barrio in which research was done has disappeared because of the building of a new highway. I accessed the data produced during the period and performed a re-analysis over a set of qualitative transcripts. My research project focused on open coding some of the said data. I found three different main concerns: reproducing family economy at home, avoiding the municipality’s law enforcement in the streets, and participating in unions to respond to marginalization. However, the main concerns were later specified. This article describes the grounded theory of resourcing from close relationships as a way of constantly resolve the main concern of managing survival in families of recyclers. Methodology This paper uses CGT research design for discovering how participants continually solve their main concern. As said by Giske and Artinian (2007), after finding a main concern, the researcher then focuses on one relevant core category to explain how participants solve it. But the theory is not ready yet. Following Glaser and Holton (2005), the use of theoretical codes integrates sub-categories and properties with the core category. CGT is characterized by a two-step coding process: substantive coding and theoretical coding. The first step comprises open and selective coding (Holton, 2007). This process is powered by the ability to conceptualize with fit, theoretical sampling and the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1965), which allows to discover major categories, including a core category. After choosing (and not forcing) a core category, the researcher works selectively, collecting and analyzing data only related to the first and other categories related to it. The sorting of memos and theoretical sensitivity by reflecting on the fit of theoretical codes to the substantive patters found in the data makes a CGT a well-grounded explanation. On using secondary data...

About the Authors

Barry Chametzky, Ph.D. American College of Education, City University of Seattle. Dr. Chametzky holds graduate degrees in Music (Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, City University of New York), French (Middlebury College), and Foreign Language education (University of Pittsburgh).  Dr. Chametzky is an active researcher in the fields of andragogy, e-learning, anxiety and online foreign language acquisition, and classic grounded theory with numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters to his credit.  He is also one of the reviewers and the copyeditor for the Grounded Theory Review.  He facilitates online learning with master’s and doctoral students in the fields of educational technology and leadership, and serves as a dissertation chairperson to a number of candidates. Email: barry@bluevine.net Mark Crowder, PhD. Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr. Mark Crowder is Education Lead for the Department of Strategy, Enterprise and Sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.  He is also a senior lecturer in Strategy and Business Psychology.  He studied at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool before gaining his PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of Chester.  He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. Mark’s research interests are split between educational management and cognitive psychology. As a career educator, Dr. Lisa Goldberg has taught for over 30 years in both the public school and as adjunct professor.  She graduated from Fielding Graduate School in 2010 with a doctorate in Educational Leadership.  Using Classic Grounded Theory as her research methodology, Dr. Goldberg discovered that value-based decision-making is one of the key concepts in moving on and making voluntary change in one’s life.  Her contribution to the field has led others to use concepts from her dissertation.  Currently, Dr. Goldberg works as adjunct professor at Saybrook University where she guides and teaches dissertation students.  Email: lisakanga1@gmail.com. Maria Mouratidou, PhD. University of Cumbria. Dr. Maria Mouratidou is a lecturer at the University of Cumbria. Her research interests are within HRM, OB and career management.  She has a wealth of HR experience, gained in an international context.  She studied at the University of Macedonia and the University of Sunderland before gaining her PhD in Human Resource Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and is currently studying for an MA in Education. Dr. Vander Linden received her doctorate in education from Fielding Graduate University with specializations in classic grounded theory and higher education. She has a master’s in special education from the University of North Carolina and a BA in mathematics from Queens University.  She also has special training in working with children with dyslexia and reading disabilities. Dr. Kara Vander Linden has been a classic grounded theory (GT) researcher and educator for over 15 years.  She currently teaches research and supervises classic GT dissertations at Saybrook University.  She is a peer reviewer for the Grounded Theory Review and is the founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Classic Grounded Theory (https://classicgroundedtheory.org/). Diego Mauricia Paucar Villacorta, BSSc. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Mr. Paucar Villacorta is a young Peruvian Sociologist born in Lima with a five-year professional experience in social innovation for development. Academically, in one way or another, all his contributions explore the methodology of sociological research. At school, he has been invited by students to teach various open courses about qualitative data analysis, theorizing and quantitative data collection techniques. Right now, he is the leader of two independent teams of un-affiliated researchers...