Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City

As economic crises struck the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s, large segments of the population turned to the informal economy to survive. Though this phenomenon has previously been analyzed from a strictly economic point of view, this book looks at street vending in the largest city in the world, Mexico City, as a political process.

Employing a street-level analysis based on intensive participant observation, with interviews, archival research, and surveys, the author presents a view of...