Excruciating Journey of Sanitation Workers: Evidence of Mobility and Change from Field

Abstract

The article explores approaches adopted by scavengers to protect themselves from stigma and describes how these approaches are temporal and incomplete. It also addresses the perception of scavenger’s son education and social status for their children’s social mobility. Social mobility has been described among scavengers and its relationship with changes that are taking place among the scavengers of Lucknow. A detailed discussion of ‘social mobility’ is carried out in this document supported by empirical data. At the applied level, the present study may help to identify the aspirations and expectations of the scavengers. In other words, it has been provided as an indicator of measuring the desires and efforts of the scavengers for their status in the caste or the class structure or both. In this article, an effort was made at two levels to know the nature of the status identification of the respondents. At one level, they were asked about their interaction with the non-scavenging community of other Scheduled Castes and their interaction pattern with the upper caste. In further analysis, first, this article has discussed occupation followed by mobility, its various forms and its significance in a scavenger’s life and finally focuses on social mobility in the scavengers’ context.