Citation

Hidalgo LA. Latino Stud. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group -- Palgrave-Macmillan)

DOI

10.1057/s41276-022-00367-2

PMID

35437427

PMCID

PMC9008393

Abstract

Since the 1930s, street vending in Los Angeles has been classified as a misdemeanor, punishable by jail time and fines. The Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign (LASVC)-a coalition of Brown and Black street vendors and social justice organizations-succeeded in decriminalizing street vending. Drawing on data collected from 2013 to 2020 and utilizing ethnographic and digital humanities methods, this paper spotlights fifteen Black and Brown street-vendor leaders of the LASVC. Combined street-vendor leader narratives reveal how laws and enforcement practices undermined their ability to stay free, remain housed, and keep families and vending communities together. This paper differentiates between state-sanctioned legal violence, which led to dispossession and family separation, and community-sanctioned legal violence to demonstrate how laws that criminalize street vendors make them targets for other forms of violence, namely surveillance by co-ethnics. Legal violence often occurs simultaneously and cumulatively adds extra levels of precarity for street vendors.

Language: en

Keywords

Family separation; Informal economies; Legal violence; Race-relational; Street vending; Urban ethnography