**2. Research methodology**

#### **2.1 Study setting**

The study focuses on Agbogloshie in Accra. Agbogbloshie is the nickname of a commercial district on the Korle Lagoon of the Odaw river, near the center of Accra, Ghana's capital city. Near the slum called "Old Fadama," the population of Agbogbloshie consists of economic migrants from northern and other rural parts of Ghana. To make a living, most Agbogbloshie residents engage in precarious economic activities [49]. For example, Ghana's e-waste dump site at Agbogbloshie is reportedly the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa, and this has attracted the attention of many international environmental groups, researchers, and journalists. The dump is currently a site for trading in products recovered from the waste stream [23, 50]. Migrant workers scavenge the waste, dismantling the scrap in open-air burning to recover precious components for sale, including gold, copper, silver, aluminum, iron, and brass [51]. Children who are able to attend school often spend every evening and weekend processing waste, and searching for metals [52]. Dwellings are wooden shacks that lack water and sanitation [53]. Besides, Agbogloshie also serves as an area for most migrants who work as head porters, locally referred to as "Kayayei," who are manual laborers and transport goods to and from the markets. Typically, these head porters carry their loads in a large pan placed on their heads, using a moistened coil of cloth as a buffer to make a living. This and many other precarious economic activities are what migrants are confronted with in their daily routine work for survival. As a result, Agbogbloshie serves as a prime location for this study (**Figure 1**).

*In the Process of Being Left Behind: Rural-Urban Migration, Precarious Work Conditions... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106907*

**Figure 1.** *Map of the study area.*
