Friday, February 7th, 2014 Remapping the Edge: Informality and Legality in a Night Street Market, Baguio City, Philippines

Description

In the Philippines, increasing rural to urban migration and a lack of income-generating employment have led to new forms of livelihood characterized by complex intersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal work and public space use. This paper uses Baguio City’s new Harrison Road Night Street Market to argue that both street vendors and municipal officials are complicit in reconfiguring informality and legality as urban organizing logics – unmapping and remapping urban public space and livelihoods to their mutual advantages – increased rental income for the city and viable jobs for vendors. Such political-economic manoeuvering by both parties also reveals insights about the intersection of different forms of power – that between vendors and the city, between vendor associations, and among vendors. I suggest that by securing government permission to establish a “legal” used clothing night market on a main city artery, Baguio City’s previously marginalized street vendors have been able to assert their rights to livelihood in arenas of power from which they have been largely excluded.

Lynne Milgram is Professor of Anthropology at OCAD University, Toronto. Her current research in the Philippines explores labour and transformations in urban public space with regard to governmentality, legal/illegal practice, activism, and marketplace redevelopment. Her recent co-edited books include: 2009, Economics and Morality: Anthropological Approaches (with Browne) and 2014, Street Economies in the Urban Global South (with Hansen and Little).