Street trading in the city of São Paulo: globalization impact and urban conflicts

• Grant number: 15/09192-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2015
• End date: November 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Urban Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Vera da Silva Telles
• Grantee: Regis Bernard Minvielle
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/26116-5 - The govern of conflict in the production of the contemporary city: the case of São Paulo, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/09319-8 - From Dakar to São Paulo: the emergence of new migratory and commercial networks, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Under a socio-anthropological approach, this project proposes to research the rearticulating of "comercio ambulante" in Sao Paulo, following two axis of research: on the one hand, the new territoriality - or redefined territoriality - street trading, in response to forms of control implemented in the traditional centers of informal trade in São Paulo (street 25 de Março and Santa Ifigenia). If this region (and others city), street trading has decreased dramatically or even disappeared, the street worker moves to other places in the city, particularly strategic points in the circulation and flow of urban mobility. On the other hand, these social and territorial shifts seem, since the past few years, to articulate with an increasing presence of new waves of foreign migrants who are already part of the São Paulo landscape: Africans of various nationalities (Senegalese, Nigerian, Angolan, ivorianos), and Peruvians, Paraguayans and also Haitian. This is the second axis of research: launching, under various forms, in street trading in various parts of the city, these practices seem to apply in cross-border informal networks, linking places of origin and urban centers where these migrants install, also operating in the uncertain frontiers of legal and illegal when this informal trade intersects with several trafficking.