Scrap value: finders and keepers in Kenya’s scrap metal recovery chain

Scrap metal collecting in Nairobi spans the city both spatially and in terms of social class, linking precarious scrap pickers to some of the city's wealthiest elite. Processes of sorting and amassing scrap metal allow it to pass stepwise along a "recovery chain” from small, to medium, to large dealers. Through this work, scrap metal shifts from small, heterogenous (scrappy) collections of remainders in the initial stages of collection to large, homogenized accumulations of materials. Its value shifts accordingly, growing in price and perceived quality as it goes up the chain and transforms from indeterminate remainder to commodity. This shift reinforces a classed distinction between finders and accumulators: the largest dealers in the recovery chain accumulate the most while the roadside gatherers, who actually find scrap, don't accumulate at all. The vulnerability of those gatherers and the small dealers who buy from them is exacerbated by the trade's criminalization. Aggressive policing of scrap gatherers and small dealers encourages intentional opacity around the source of scrap, while scalar thresholds work to insulate the different scales from each other: large-scale scrap dealers don't know, and don't really want to know, where or how the smaller dealers and finders do their work. I argue that criminalization and scalar thresholds work to preserve and naturalize these hierarchies of accumulation, allowing scrap to move while keeping labor in its place.