Channeled into a Transnational Street Vending Hub

Abstract

Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Buenos Aires, this article explores the social infrastructure created by Senegalese migrants, which channels newcomers into the cities’ prolific economy of street vending. The article focuses on the often invisible social infrastructure that emerges when people either do not have access to, or are excluded from, formal infrastructures created by the state, city governments, or NGOs. The article highlights how established migrants shape newly arrived migrants’ navigation and access to opportunities in the city to help reproduce life along a migration trajectory that fulfils social expectations in Senegal. However, this process also involves friction and new social alliances, especially when certain roles and expectations become contested.