Competing for Jurisdiction: Practical Legitimation and the Persistence of Informal Recycling in Urban India

Abstract

AbstractHow did informal garbage collectors, who had long provided the only door-to-door and recycling services in Delhi, manage to survive the introduction of formal garbage collection trucks? This question raises the larger problem of why informal institutions—well-organized and socially recognized, but legally unauthorized and unregulated platforms for political and economic organization—have proven so persistent. I draw on evidence collected during 20 months of ethnographic research in Delhi, focusing on participant observation with informal collectors during their neighborhood routes and interviews with 50 informal collectors. Bringing together political and urban sociology, postcolonial urban studies, and institutional theory, the paper frames competition over city garbage and recycling as a relational matter. I argue that informal workers preserved their jurisdiction through practical legitimation, depending on everyday actions and social expectations rather than explicit laws or beliefs to secure legitimacy. I demonstrate how status-based relations, here based on caste and labor migration, can confer legitimacy and provide a source of regulation, as actors set out and meet implicit expectations for appropriate actions, relationships, and social boundaries.