Urban poverty and street vending in Mexico City and Milan

This chapter aims to enrich the literature on poverty and street commerce by looking at the multiple ways in which street vendors understand, construct, and perceive their current situation and role within urban life. The main objective is the de-homogenization of street commerce, shedding light on how differences that emerged in each context have important consequences in terms of claims, constructions of collective identities, and analysis of the relations between informal street-vending activities and urban poverty. In the chapter, a dialogue between two different case studies on street-vending activities in Mexico City and Milan is developed, focusing the attention on two issues: (1) the pervasiveness of informality that characterize the work of street vendors, including the institutional aspects surrounding such activities; and (2) the social construction of the meanings of formal/informal, licit/illicit that comes from the prevalent narratives on street-vending activities.