“Working in the street is not a crime”

An approach to street vending in the city of Santiago del Estero (Argentina) from 2021

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the ways of organizing work to "earn a living" in public spaces of workers of the popular economy (E.P onwards) in the capital city of Santiago del Estero since 2021. That is, to characterize the activities of obtaining resources and ways of obtaining money, to describe the practices linked to social reproduction and to inquire about the meanings given to the work of selling in public spaces at present. To do this, we resort to the socialization of an ethnographic experience that describes the historically established practices of street vending or fixed stalls in the area of the city's Park and Waterfront. That is, we want to put in tension the dimensions involved in "making a living" for a group of workers organized in the popular economy. The street is undoubtedly a space of domination that systematically produces and reproduces a class structure when it comes to accessing, circulating and inhabiting the different work situations in the cities. In line with the thematic call of the dossier, we propose to recover the notion of "the street" as a multiple and intersectional place that becomes a central dimension to understand the ways of work organization, the obtaining of money, the meanings attributed to street vending, etc. In this way, we make use of the tools provided by ethnography in order to make the nature of economic life and social relations more complex, based on the testimonies and experiences of workers.