Negotiating Streets and Space in Transnational Trade Marketplaces in Oran (Algeria) and Cairo (Egypt): “Place Struggle” in the Commercial City

Built on empirical material from field study conducted between 2011 and 2014 and based on a qualitative methodology, this paper aims at highlighting the struggles for power within the appropriation of commercial streets inside two transnational trade centralities, al-Muski in Cairo (Egypt) and Medina J’dida in Oran (Algeria). It demonstrates that street vendors have known how to benefit from the weakening and/or the weakness of urban authorities and have been able to negotiate their place and their presence in the public space. First, the paper presents the general development of street vending in the two transnational commercial centralities. Then, it analyses the unsettled and often tense relationships between street vendors and urban authorities, where the control of public space and, through it, the control of the city at large is at stake. Finally, it highlights the complex power relationships between street vendors and official traders who compete for marketplace access. In summary, while facing an ever-changing environment filled with contradictions, street vendors constantly have to negotiate their place in these two marketplaces, and through them, in the city.