A contribution by Rosina Marquez Reiter (The Open University, UK) and Ben Evans (The Open University, UK)
Medellín, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires are important tourist destinations of the so-called Global South. Medellín and Buenos Aires attracted 1,400,000 and 1,500,000 tourists in 2022, respectively, while Rio usually welcomes 5,000,000 people (of which 2 million are foreign tourists) every year. Tourists who visit these regions usually use the metro, trains or buses to move in these metropolis; visit the astonishing Plaza Botero and Antioquía Museum in Medellín, or the Princesa del Mar in Copacabana Beach, that shines upon Rio de Janeiro. However, they may not be aware of the way in which thousands of people that live there have to make their precarious means of living in the public space, since their governments do not promote the inclusion in the labour market. Vendors in the public space, generally referred as “street vendors” are those who sell:
…articles, goods, manufactures, food or general use manufactures or that offer services to the general public, in the street, lanes, sidewalks, promenades, pavements, public parks or any public or private spaces, whether from a temporal built structure or moving from one place to another.
Law Insider
These vendors try to be seen and heard within the daily social rhythm that defines the urban movement, with the goal of transforming walkers, passengers and other inhabitants of the city in potential clients. They tend to operate outside the formal economy, which is, in the segment of a country’s economy that includes formally registered business, taxed, authorized and regulated. Besides this formal economic activity, it coexists a growing diversity of other forms of revenue. One of these is the popular or solidarity economy, which enables those with a limited access to paid work the creation of a means of living using their own skills, abilities and strategies.
The work made by vendors in the public space is ofter considered a spillover, unorganized and an obstacle for the urban environment. This fact drives to evictions, persecutions and loss of revenue of the vendors that must earn a living that way.
Whether the UN, the ILO, WIEGO and StreetNet International keep pressuring governments from the Global South and elsewhere in order not to criminalize these vendors, who work accordingly their right to reach a proper means of living to keel their and their families’ health and wellbeing, there is still much to do to understand their daily struggle so these workers make their ends meet. Open University is conducting a research aimed at knowing in real time the experiences lived by vendors in the Global South. This research is conducted by professor Rosina Márquez Reiter and funded by, among others, the university’s Open Societal Challenges program, which establishes relations between vendors, their labour unions and gremial gatherings in the Global South. This ambitious work tries to collect empirical evidence of everyday labour practices of vendors in the public space. Its goal is to understand the normative coordination of vendors and the collective regulation that supports it. This research is shedding light that support the legitimacy and celebration of skilled although precarious practices of these workers, that are part of the cultural component of these cities.
To this day, Márquez Reiter has made an exploratory videoethnography that includes, among other things, video recordings of the daily practices of vendors in real time in Medellín, Río de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. These recordings are used as a way to document and as an analytic tool. Said recordings allow to grasp the “wordling” moments of these workers, and destabilize the disciplinary power of the language compared to other communicative resources. Preliminary results stressed the ability and considerable skills of these workers to effectively manage time and space constraints in the search of a good customer service. This implies:
- high levels of persuasive abilities, both verbal and corporal;
- a deep knowledge of the needs of clients and product placement;
- the ability to adapt their service and to obtain the product or products suitable to the needs of the clients (or even other vendors), and the ability to adapt to new locations in the city;
- the compromise to find products that are not immediately available anywhere else.
Vendors still live under the constant fear of being persecuted. Persecution from authorities (police or municipal) is likely if vendors sell outside official hours or without a permit, even if clients are waiting to buy. These facts are aggravated by the constant fear of territorial displacement, that also put gentrification processes on the table. Another source of worries, specially downtown Medellín but not exclusively, is the constant state of vigilance that vendors have to keep, since they are witnesses of a number of criminal and ilegal activities in the public space while they do their daily work in an honored way.
Vendors also offer their services to population segments that cannot acquire similar products in other places. In spite of the structural vulnerability faced by vendors, their work also promote employment opportunities for other workers, like those in charge of storage, security or also street vendors that sell food and drinks to those who work in an stationary way.
The work made by vendors also contributes to the formal economy, specially when they get their goods from wholesalers. Vendors and those who do these basic services are part of a circular economy that characterizes the rich patrimony of these cites.
So, next time you visit one of these beautiful cities, maybe you are interested in these practices of organized selling, professional and collaborative that contribute to the daily earnings of workers and the cultural ambiance of the city. Maybe, would you fancy some corn on the beach, under the sun?
