Thesis Title:
International flows and local geographies: Political ecologies of e-waste from the UK to Ghana.
Thesis Abstract:
This study examines the international flows of e-waste and the lived experiences at the local level, with a particular focus on e-waste exports from the UK to the Old Fadama neighbourhood in Accra, Ghana.
Eradication of landfills is becoming prevalent among cities in the Global South. With transnational flows of e-waste persisting, the displacement of socio-economically disadvantaged groups at the bottom of global e-waste supply chains raises important questions. While studies have explored the global-local connections in urban waste management in general, there is a notable lack of ground-level research with a wider and more specific analysis of e-waste itself as a socio-material flow, and its relations as shaped by both global processes and local realities.
This study, informed by political ecology, adopts a multi-dimensional strategy inspired by the ‘follow-the-thing’ approach to map the flows of e-waste (i.e. end-of-life mobile phones, computers, and solar panels) from the UK to Ghana. Through ethnographic fieldwork at Old Fadama, the study examines informal recycling practices to establish the local socio-economic impacts and to understand why and how these are produced and exploited by material and semiotic multi-scalar forces within global e-waste flows.
By adopting a situated relational framework, the study seeks to deepen understanding of the hidden social lives of e-waste flows and inform discussions for more equitable modes of global e-waste governance, thereby contributing to interdisciplinary research on waste and labour studies in the social sciences.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Carlo Inverardi-Ferri