ABSTRACT
Existing anthropological theories and ethnographic narratives have focused on both types of marginalisation and the dominant view is of the primary source being economic, which leads to ideological marginalisation through the active. As such, ideological marginalisation, embodied in silent defiance and subtle negotiation by a marginalised people, gives a premise distinctly separate from economic marginalisation. Since ideological marginalisation takes the lead role over economic, the waste pickers are unable to progress in their business of waste picking. There is also the direct threat of eviction from the Railway Authority, which forces waste pickers to purchase small plots of land in the rural areas. For waste pickers, and communities like them, their original, rural, position of landlessness and unemployment, alongside economic polarisation, prepares the ground for migration, which in turn leads to the emergence of insurgent non-citizens in opposition to real citizens.
