How to Make Money while Running from the Cops

Abstract

Chapter 6 develops the theory in a comparative context, by adding case studies of organized and unorganized street vendors and the city governments that they interact with in El Alto, Bolivia and two districts in São Paulo, Brazil. The chapter is based on original interview, survey, participant observation, and ethnographic data that was collected during a total of three months in each city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019. As part of the project, the author briefly sold selfie sticks as a street vendor in a central district of São Paulo in 2015. Comparing the city of La Paz to the neighboring city of El Alto holds many national-level features constant but varies city government enforcement capacity. Comparing two districts in São Paulo to each other and then La Paz and El Alto adds more variation on enforcement capacity. São Paulo, the large, modern metropolis of the region’s richest country, with many employment opportunities, services, stable laws, and a history of labor organizing, should have more organized street vendors than La Paz, according to resource- or political context-based theories of collective action. Instead, only 2 percent of São Paulo’s 100,000 vendors are organized, compared to 75 percent of La Paz’s 60,000. I explain this difference with the interaction between individual resources, official incentives, and local government enforcement capacity.