Project Redemption: Conducting Research with Informal Workers in New York City

Informal workers are a challenging group to work with, due to geographically dispersed locations, undocumented migrants, and other forms of vulnerability. We discuss the process through which we gained entry to work with informal workers in New York City. We work with “canners”, a population which collects recyclables and deposits them at a redemption center to collect cash refunds. Partnering with a nonprofit organization solves issues of group organization, but difficulties remain in building relationships with individuals. We used a combination of in-person meetings, an iterative and collaborative research design, and incentives to lay the groundwork for multi-method research with this group.