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Undocumented Street Vendors: Citizenship, Deportations and Campaigns

Fazila BhimjiUniversity of Central Lancashire

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• 1) deportability context that street vendors are subject to

• 2) articulations and expressions of everyday urban citizenship.

• 3) current campaigns that are underway to assist street vendors.

• 4) theoretical implications of this work.

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Deportations in the United States

• More than a million people have been removed from this country since the beginning of the Obama administration.

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Secure Communities

• Secure Communities was introduced by the Bush administration in March 2008 and piloted in 14 jurisdictions beginning in October 2008.

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• What is Secure Communities?

• Secure Communities is a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program designed to identify immigrants in U.S. jails who are deportable under immigration law.

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• How does Secure Communities work?

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Secure Communities and Street Vendors

• In theory, Secure Communities should weed out serious and violent criminals from low-level offenders. But it doesn’t.

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• As a result, street vendors who have no prior criminal history are often held along with drug dealers and violent gang members.

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Secure Communities and Racial Profiling

• Secure Communities leads to engage in racial profiling through the targeting of Latinos for minor violations or pretextual arrests.

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• According to ICE’s own figures, well over half of those deported through Secure Communities had either no criminal convictions or had been convicted only of very minor offenses.

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• In February, 2011, a women ice cream vendor, while pushing her cart in a section of Los Angeles, was cited for coming too close to a school, which resulted in her arrest: she now faces deportation (Tokumatsu 2011).

• http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/New-Front-in-the-Immigration-Fight-Ice-Cream-Carts-116436884.html

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• http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/07/19/street-vendor-targeted-for-deportation/

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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CctDWMNZQ4s

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ACLU’s and Secure Communities

• The ACLU of California has heard from hundreds of people who have found themselves incarcerated by local police for immigration purposes and subject to deportation following what should have been routine contacts with law enforcement.

• They include in downtown Los Angeles, arrested street vendors by the LAPD for not having a California ID and detained for days on unjustified ICE holds. Under normal circumstances, police would cite and release them

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Urban Citizenship Framework

• A number of scholars have commented on the ways in which cities have become the contested territory upon which ethnic groups are compelled to define their identities and articulate citizenship rights and obligations (Baubock 2003; Isin 2000; Mushaben 2006; Rocco 1999; Varsanyi 2006).

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Citizenship and Personhood/Collectivities

• Anthropologist Gálvez (2010: 20) conceptualizes citizenship as an understanding of the ways that individuals negotiate their belonging and, by extension, their rights and responsibilities in a polity; a process that articulates personhood while also producing collectivities.

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• However, legal understandings of citizenship cannot be omitted. in discussions of non-citizens.

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Street Vendors: Expressions of Urban Citizenship

• Fieldwork and Methodology• Interviews and Participant Observation of

Women Street Vendors in Los Angeles.

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• West Lake/MacArthur Park Area (North of Downtown)

• South Central Los Angeles (South of Downtown)

• Glassel Recreation Park (North East of Downtown)

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Northeast Los Angeles

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Collectivity in Central Park

• MacArthur Park• Street vending takes place between six and ten

in the morning in the commercial streets around MacArthur Park in the Westlake area. Women of Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Mexican origin sell a variety of foods such as tamales, pupusas, and pan dulces, and beverages such as arroz con leche, champurradas, and fresh orange juice with or without raw eggs

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Displays of Collectivity in McArthur Park

• Collectively, they came to understand that the city inspectors and the police were the main obstacles to their success.

• Almost all of the women I interviewed told me that they have to leave the premises at a specific time because the police start to frequent the area between 9 and 10 in the morning and issue fines or in some extreme cases take the vendors’ money from them.

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Resistance In South Central Los Angeles

• “Mi trabajo no es ilegal. Pero es ilegal a vendersin permiso. Pero no es un delito.” (My work is not illegal but what is illegal is to sell without a permit. But it is not a crime).

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• The main problem in this business is that when one does not have the permit to work and when the city gets you and throws all your things one loses all your invested money. Then one has to start all anew again. Whether you have or don’t have capital. When the city throws my things I have to go and buy everything.

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• The problem is that anytime somebody can call the city on you. When the city comes around they can fine you and give you a ticket. Or the police can come around and seize all your things as well. That happened to me a few times. They took everything and I had to buy everything all over again. We cannot do anything but march forward. But I felt terrible because one is made to feel guilty because one does not have the right to sell

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• One day I was selling on Avalon and Manchester. The police came and told me, “Don’t move.” He grabbed my bag. I was annoyed. I stayed there staring back at him. I told him that the bag belongs to me. You cannot just come and grab it. One sells and earns for one’s children. One is not robbing. I told him that I was simply selling. I am not leaving thrash around here. I clean well. I am just standing here. You have no reason to bother us.

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Belonging in Glassell Park

• Here it is much calmer. There are no problems. In the Allies one has to be super alert-super alert-super. I simply sell there on the weekends but I take another cart which is not so good because I am sure when they come they will take away everything. Therefore I like to sell in this park. Yes (smiles). Because it is calm and there are no problems.

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• It is very calm here. Here I also know a lot people. When I walk around they know me. Because in other parts of the city there are many problems. I like to sell in Highland Park because I have a lot of clients. The people who have children come out and buy. But the police and city don’t allow us to sell on the streets. In Highland Park, it is difficult because the police is very hard. One time the police me that I needed a permit to sell. I told him that I am working. He told me to go but did not take my things. I am very vigilant. But I know if the city health inspectors come around they will seize everything. But there is no solution. I came here to work. To move forward. To struggle.

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• The East Los Angeles Community Corporation (ELACC) hosted an upcoming town hall meeting in August 2012 , as part of its on-going efforts to legalize street food vending in the City of Los Angeles.

• “We at East LA Community Corporation want to see a policy which is easily accessible by street vendors and can be easily implemented by the City,” Isela Gracian, associate director of ELACC

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Power of the Pen

• Posters on the Walls• Street Vendors were asked to write their

opinions on various topics:• Benefit they provide to the community.• Why they sell?• Insightful comments were provided.

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EMPOWERING STREET VENDORS

• WHERE THEY WOULD LIKE TO SELL?• WHAT WOULD LIKE THEY SELL?• HOW DIFFICULT/EASY THE PROCESS SHOULD BE TO OBTAIN A

PERMIT?• WHAT SHOULD BE THE PROCESS OF OBTAINING A PERMIT?• HOW ACCESSIBLE SHOULD THE PROCESS BE IN TERMS OF

LANGAUGE?• HOW OFTEN ONE SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO RENEW THE PERMITS?• SHOULD THERE BE A LIMIT TO THE PERMITS GRANTED ? (IN NY

THERE IS A LIMIT-PERMITS ARE BEING SOLD IN BLACK MARKET)• HOW EASY SHOULD THE OFFICES BE TO ACCESS?• WHAT OTHER TYPES OF SUPPORT WOULD VENDORS LIKE?

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Street Vendors’ Campaigns 2012

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Theoretical Implications• The political and territorial claims that undocumented immigrants make

cannot be demarcated. Undocumented immigrants street vendors who live in Los Angeles perform ‘good citizenship’ It is at the level of the city that substantive citizenship is exercised and aspired for.

• Furthermore, undocumented immigrants, because of there particular legal status, remain in many ways bound to the cities in which they live because their movements within and outside the state are severely restricted by laws and policies.

• Thus undocumented immigrants in many respects may convey a greater sense of membership and investment in the cities in which they live. Certainly, several of the participants who formed part of the study had never been outside Los Angeles upon immigration from their countries of origin

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• Legal scholars understand citizenship as a formal status defined by legal documents and state policies (Glenn 2011).

• For example Varsanyi (2006) argues, ‘citizenship is necessarily considered more of a sociological process by which a particular marginalized group, excluded from formal membership, finds an alternate route to belonging. In contradistinction, these local policy initiatives engage more directly with legal status’ (p. 241).

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• Sociologist, Engin Isin (1997) writes ‘the city has not only been a foreground or a background to struggles for group rights but also a battleground to claim those rights’ He notes ‘every age since the Greeks fashioned an image of the citizen and citizenship has always expressed a right to a political space in the sense of a right to a stake in the fate of a territorial polity to which one belongs’ (1999:165).

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• For many undocumented immigrants street vendors, it meant being constantly aware and knowledgeable of the changing laws and to then perform and claim citizenship in accordance with these laws. In this sense, urban citizenship needs to be regarded as that of extending beyond a rights-claiming activity in an idealized sense – but rather, where the formal legal and sociological processes interact closely.