The subject of the dissertation is research into global waste picker organisations in the form of self-organisation as membershipbased organisations of the poor (MBOP) with the starting point and focus on the case of Pata Rat/Romania in international comparison. In the case of the Pata Rat landfill settlement on the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca/Romania, the debate is largely entangled around the question of an ascribed collective identity that threatens to fail on questions of sustainability (Vincze 2013).

With a paradigm shift away from working on questions of Roma ethnic identity, to which a significant proportion of the inhabitants of Pata Rat can be counted (UNDP 2012), and the associated racist discourses as well as real marginalisation and discrimination, towards a constitution of Pata Rat as a social space that the inhabitants appropriate and transform in a future-oriented way, a way out of deadlocked perspectives and a normative turn on a higher level opens up.

A successful self-organisation of the waste pickers of Pata Rat in the form of membership-based organisations of the poor (MBOP) has great potential for the future: "the formation of scavenger cooperatives can result in grassroots development, poverty alleviation, and environmental protection" (Medina 2000). The people in Pata Rat are thus transformed from "rubbish people" to "rubbish workers".

Approach and milestones:

The study is situated in the sociology of labour and organisation, globalisation research, waste studies and cultural anthropology.