Street Vendor Struggles: Maintaining a Livelihood Through the COVID-19 Lockdown in Hanoi, Vietnam

This chapter takes an intersectional approach to examining experiences of migrant street vendors in Hanoi. It emphasizes how pre-existing conditions of migration status, low-income, and informal working arrangements amplified the challenge of maintaining livelihoods during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also draws on semi-structured interviews with 31 street vendors in Hanoi, which were completed between May and July 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions relating to the first wave were lifting and before the second wave hit. The chapter focuses predominantly on migrant vendors and their already precarious situation on the city's streets, comparing their responses with long-term resident vendors. It discusses urban informal livelihoods and inequality, analyzing how the interlaced axes of migrant woman or man, low socio-economic class, and informal worker created specific inequalities and/or barriers for individuals attempting to maintain urban livelihoods during the pandemic in Hanoi.