Doctoral Dissertation Research: Global Policy, National Law, and Local Economies

What happens when internationally heralded policy approaches to problems conceived as 'global' problems with 'global' solutions are launched at the national and local levels? How do international law and global governance practices play out through particular practices, institutions, and different levels of government? Do hybrid processes emerge when global regulations are inserted into already functioning and yet functionally different systems? As a governing consensus takes shape around the world in particular policy areas, this project asks how policies that follow this consensus impact local places and marginalized people, and how, in turn, various actors in these places respond. It does so by examining global regulations seeking to sustainably manage electronic waste. E-waste has attracted international attention for the rapidly growing quantities of electronic devices -- from computers and cell phones to washing machines -- reaching their end-of-life across the world, and their management in informal or 'backyard' recycling processes in developing countries. Since e-waste has been broadly conceived as a global problem, with regulation focusing on preventing the hazardous processes used by informal recyclers, this research undertakes a significant re-examination of e-waste as embedded in wider reuse and repair industries. The project seeks to explain how two systems -- that of the established unregulated industry and a new government-authorized corporate sector -- co-exist and potentially even reinforce each other, and how we understand regulation when its implementation plays out in unpredictable and potentially contradictory ways. In addition to advancing theory on the complex relationship between global governance, local practice, and informality, the findings have policy relevance for regulatory interventions that target the informal sector in the Global South.

This project explores the above questions by examining how e-waste regulation is produced and implemented in India through 17 months of research on used, repair and scrap electronics markets in the National Capital Region of India, which includes Delhi and its environs. Using primarily ethnographic methodologies, this research examines the evolution of a hybrid e-waste management system in India produced by adaptations to the new regulations and their uncomfortable fit with pre-existing informal industries. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with a wide range of participants in Delhi's used electronics markets, including small-scale scrap collectors, recyclers, IT maintenance experts and international electronics traders, as well as interviews with policy makers and government officials.