Changing Household Dynamics: Children’s American Generational Resources in Street Vending Markets (original) (raw)
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Intersectional Dignities: Latino Immigrant Street Vendor Youth in Los Angeles
In Los Angeles many Latino immigrants earn income through street vending, as do some of their teenagers and younger children. Members of their community and external authorities view these economic activities as deviant, low status, and illegal, and young people who engage in them are sometimes chased by the police and teased by their peers. Why do they consent to do this work, and how do they respond to the threats and taunts? Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with street vending children and teens, the authors argue that an intersectionalities perspective can help explain both why the youth engage in this work and how they construct narratives of intersectional dignities to counter experiences of shame, stigma, and humiliation with street vending. Intersectional dignities refers to moral constructions based on inversions of widely held negative stereotypes of racial ethnic minorities, the poor, immigrants, and in this case, children and girls who earn money in the streets. By analyzing how they counter stigma, one learns something about the structure of the broader society and the processes through which disparaged street vendor youth build affirming identities.
Economic empathy in family entrepreneurship: Mexican-origin street vendor children and their parents
Research on ethnic entrepreneurship has shown that children of immigrants may experience an economic advantage associated with their entrepreneurial parents’ ‘modes of incorporation’ – the individual, group, and structural opportunities and characteristics that facilitate entrepreneurial participation and consequent economic progress. This ethnographic study examines street vending as a family enterprise and finds that the entrepreneurial, but nevertheless, disadvantaged Latino street vending parents experience economic stagnation. Child street vendors in this study experience compounded disadvantages stemming from their parents’ social locations rooted in unauthorized status, informal work, and stigma, as working together shortens the distance between ‘adulthood’ and ‘childhood’. Yet, street vending also sets the stage for children to develop economic empathy, a resiliency that results from experiencing their parent’s position of oppression that helps prevent an authority shift in favour of the children.
Health Education & Behavior, 2016
The objective of this study was to observe parent–child interactions in tiendas, limited assortment food stores catering to Latinos in the United States, and to examine the extent to which child involvement influenced these interactions and their purchase outcomes. Two confederates, one posing as a tienda employee and one posing as a customer, observed the entire shopping trip of 100 Latino parent–child (mean age = 8 years) dyads and coded the following: number and type of parent- and child-initiated request interactions, types of purchase influence attempts used by children and how parents responded, and whether the product was purchased. Level of child involvement was examined as a potential influencing factor on purchasing. The observations were relatively short (mean duration of 10 minutes), reflecting the “quick trip” nature of the observed shopping trips. From the 100 parent–child dyads, 144 request interactions were observed, and among dyads with at least 1 request interactio...
The study examines the experience of Latina women selling food on the streets of Los Angeles. There has been a long history of food vending since the immigration wave from Latin America to Los Angeles during the 1980s. The majority of the immigrant women who sell food are poor, without legal rights to stay in the United States, and in many instances single with children. However, the immigrant women are subject to much harassment from city officials and the police as they are forced to sell without permits, since permits are highly unaffordable and the process bureaucratic. The study examines how the women continue to work under these difficult conditions. The study also explores how the women situate themselves and the connections they make with the larger community while they sell on the street. Much of the research on Latina immigrants and informal work has been in the area of domestic work and day labor work. In examining the experience of women street vendors, the research will contribute to scholarship on undocumented immigrants, urban citizenship, and
the various pathways that undocumented Latina/o immigrant youths take upon graduation from high school in a new migrant destination. This research expands the scope of the 1.5 and second-generation incorporation literature that remains dominated by research in traditional migrant-receiving urban areas. Contextualizing the transition to adulthood within a small Southern community, I focus my ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with 75 community members on the distinct opportunity structures available to youths in a small-town setting. In spite of a reactive political climate on a local level and inertia regarding immigration policy reform on a federal level, undocumented youths in this North Carolina community benefit from extremely supportive teachers, coaches, family employers and other community members. The findings of this study demonstrate how small towns can facilitate networks of social support. Even with the opportunities created by small-town social capital, however, the undocumented youths in this sample remained acutely aware of their legal exclusion.
Creating Safe Spaces: Strategies and unintentional consequences of Latina street vendors in Los Angeles. Abstract Based on 66 interviews with child street vendors (ages 10-18) and their parents and two-and-a-half years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article demonstrates that the work that girls and boys do as street vendors both perpetuates and challenges gendered expectations among Latino families in Los Angeles. While both sons and daughters of Mexican and Central American immigrants engage in the family business, it is more common for girls to help their parents than their brothers. This article shows that girls take on greater work responsibilities in the street vending business. The girls in this study are performing a type of work that has been gendered as feminine (food preparation) and they are doing this gendered work on the street, a space that has been gendered as masculine and inappropriate for señoritas (virginal women). Paradoxically, while the street is more appropriate for males, in this context, male vendors of all ages report more instances of violence from gang members and their peers. The freedom that their male privilege affords them, also leaves them unprotected from the family and more vulnerable to street violence while peddling the streets of L.A. Formando Espacios Seguros: Estrategias y consecuencias involuntarias de vendedoras ambulantes en Los Angeles. Basada en 66 entrevistas con niños (entre 10-18 años de edad) que se dedican a la venta ambulante con sus padres y dos años y medio de investigación etnográfica, este articulo demuestra que el trabajo que las niñas y los niños hacen en la calle como vendedores ambulantes promueve y reta las expectativas de genero entre las familias Latinas en Los Ángeles. Mientras que tanto las niñas como los niños se incorporan en el negocio familiar, es más común que las niñas les ayuden a sus papas que sus hermanos. Este articulo demuestra que las niñas tienen más responsabilidades en el negocio de la venta ambulante familiar. Las niñas en este estudio hacen un tipo de trabajo que ha sido afeminado (la preparación de comida) y están haciendo este trabajo en la calle, un espacio que ha sido apropiado por el género masculino e inapropiado para señoritas (mujeres virginales). Paradójicamente, mientras que la calle es más apropiada para hombres, en este contexto, los vendedores barones de cualquier edad reportan más incidentes de violencia por medio de pandilleros y otros hombres. La libertad que les ofrece su privilegio masculino, también los deja desprotegidos del vínculo familiar y vulnerables a violencia mientes venden en las calles de L.A.