Informal work and public space: whose streets are they?

Abstract

The object of this research is the complex relationship between informal work and the public space, especially in relation to the reasons and consequences of the legal deprotection of street work. To this end, it begins from a case study of the street vendors of the Bus Station of Plano Piloto of the Distrito Federal, with the examination of the main rules directed and related to street walkers, together with other documents that qualify the phenomenon and exploratory interviews with the parties involved. In this context, the project of whitening and the choice for the formalization of free work around the figure of the European immigrant, to the detriment of the insertion of the black labor force in the formal labor market, during the transition from the enslaved labor market to the wage labour market, drove the free and freed to the occupation of the space for subsistence. In historical continuity of this process, the exclusion of labor protection leaves street workers vulnerable to perverse forms of social control, such as the removal by hygienist intentions or the prohibition of their work, either by administrative or criminal means, while they are neglected by labor protection systems. However, street trade continues to operate on the streets of the city, either by the resistance strategies created and historically improved by this group, or by the essential activities of reproduction of the working class, functional to the capitalist production system, which street workers perform in promoting the circulation of goods in certain spaces. In this perspective, the streets are the scene of the people's work and the daily claim of rights.