An Exploring into the lived Experiences of Child Garbage Collectors in Ahvaz

In recent years, the number of child labor has increased in Ahvaz, and among these children, the activity of garbage children has grown significantly. Garbage pickers at different hours of the day and night, holding a sack, wheelbarrow, or using three-wheel motors and other similar devices, search in trash cans or garbage bags and packages at the door of houses. In this research, an attempt has been made to evaluate the lived experience of these waste pickers and provide a more accurate understanding of their situation in Ahvaz city. In the current research, according to the topic and nature of the research, the qualitative method and the interpretive phenomenological approach have been used. Various strategies such as long participation in the platform, rich description, confirmation of participants, peer review, etc. were used to validate the data. The main categories extracted include social gradients, economic failure of culture, poor health of working children, weak support from guardian institutions, hope for change and the possibility of horizontal social mobility, considering garbage collection as an honorable job and a sense of pride, being exposed to risky behaviors. Children were working. The main result of the research is based on the fact that littering is affected by different issues and should not be understood only economically. In addition, a significant part of the street working children live in the suburbs and many of them have a family member or relative.