Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Production of Latino Vending "Street-Scapes" in Los Angeles

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Street vending is an economic practice exercised by millions of people around the world. Although often attributed to third-world economies, it is a phenomenon that it is visible in many cities in the United States. This doctoral dissertation research project examines the landscapes in which Latino street vendors exercise their daily informal economic practices in Los Angeles, a city where many residents (especially Latinos) favor vendors who recreate the cultural and informal economic spaces of their countries of origin. Immigrant vending practices commonly transform street corners, yards, and parking lots into informal commercial profit-making sites. This reconfiguration of urban space not only shapes immigrants' and immigrant vendors' experience of everyday life. It also shapes the urban landscape around them as well. Through the use of various qualitative methods, especially field observation, semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation, and photo documentation, the project will examine (1) how notions of "place" shape urban cultural landscapes of Latino street vendors in Los Angeles, (2) how large-scale formal economic processes shape and inform informal vending landscapes, and (3) how state enforcements, regulations, and notions of "illegalities" imposed on "brown bodies" in relation to street vendor's daily life, contribute to the production of cultural landscapes. The dialectic process of vendors creating urban cultural landscapes is important for understanding how the state at various scales intersects in the local, where tensions are created between the local-state and the vendors through the enforcement of code regulations and the surveillance of bodies. These tensions between vendors and the local state inform the production of vendor landscapes. This dialectical process shapes the collective or individual agency of the vendors. In other words, by analyzing the actors such as vendors, local business owners, and street vendors in relation to the local state (city council, code enforcers and police department), one begins to understand how street vendors exercise agency. The interplay of large-scale processes, such as the global economy and international migration together with localized social and economic efforts by vendors creates spaces where agency, individual or collective, informs the production of urban cultural landscapes. Current theories and empirical studies that focus on informal economies argue that local informal sectors develop as informal employment opportunities resulting from global economic and cultural processes in which immigrants seize the opportunities and participate as informal labor. How these informal landscapes are actually produced at the local scale (street) has not been analyzed, however. Furthermore, the studies do not focus on the role informal vending plays in shaping immigrant's daily lives. This study explores the effects of the informal economy at the local scale, particularly in global cities like Los Angeles. By examining the experiential nature of Latino street vending practices, this study furthers social science understandings of the informal economy. It highlights how, why, and where it functions as well as how this informal-labor market is racialized and gendered. By privileging voices of vendors, in particular women, whose daily lives shape and inform the urban landscape, this study links the street corner to interrelated global processes. Finally, by focusing this research on human and economic rights for street vendors and their families, this study will facilitate the development of policy and programs that serve and affect this population. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.