Informal Street Vending: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Within the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in investigating the dynamics of informal street vending, motivated by the need to address economic, social, and political inequalities. We take stock of this literature, bringing together the various streams of research in which informal street vending is integral to how cities work, particularly in the context of what is considered as the global South. The review of the related literature in this paper is structured into eight key themes, including (1) gender, (2) typology/types, (3) spatiality of street vending and public space design, (4) health and well-being, (5) individual/collective agency, (6) policy environment, (7) use of technology, and (8) links to other forms of informality. The paper concludes by outlining certain research themes that are in the process of development, identifying some understudied areas, reflecting on existing gaps, and pointing to future research directions to enable further engagement with those aspects of informal street vending research that have remained underexplored.

1. Introduction

By 2050, the population of the world residing in cities will increase by at least 2.5 billion people [1]. Forms of informality play a key role in how cities work, and informal street vending has become one of the most omnipresent forms of informal urbanism, particularly in the global South, comprising a pivotal segment of the labour force. The past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in investigating the dynamics of informal street vending, motivated by the need to address economic, social, and political inequalities, among others. Understanding informal street vending as one of the most widespread forms of informality has also been critical in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those that are linked to alleviating poverty in all its forms (SDG1), gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG5), economic prosperity (SDG8), reducing social, political and economic inequalities (SDG10), and making inclusive and resilient cities (SDG11). The New Urban Agenda adopted at the Habitat III Conference in Quito has also focused on how to deal with the challenges of rapidly urbanising cities. In addition, there has been an acceleration of scholarly focus on forms of informal street vending, particularly as researchers respond to the SDGs and New Urban Agenda. This review paper focuses on studies published between 2016 and 2020 as this 5-year period has seen the highest number of publications exploring street vending. The increasing number of studies on informal street vending in the context of the developing world encourages review paper ideas that synthesise and critically reflect on the findings, identify the understudied areas, and suggest pathways for future research. There have been only a few review articles on informal street vending since 2000 [2,3,4]. While the increasing number of identified articles published with a primary focus on informal street vending has peaked since 2016, we could not find any review articles focusing on the identified papers published over the last five years. To address this gap, we have developed and applied a structured approach to identify and review the published papers focusing on the dynamics of informal street vending since 2016 to enable a critical engagement with how far we have come in this regard.

In this paper, we explore the ways in which studies on informal street vending engaged with the key questions in relation to eight themes of (1) gender, (2) typology/types, (3) spatiality of street vending and public space design, (4) health and well-being, (5) individual/collective agency, (6) policy environment, (7) use of technology, and (8) links to other forms of informality. The primary criteria to consider for including studies in our review were: (a) must be a published research article indexed in the Scopus database; (b) must be in the English language; (c) must use certain key terms in the article title, abstract, keyword (“street vending” OR “hawking” OR “informal trading” OR “street trading” OR “informal vending” OR “vending”) AND (“informal urbanism” OR “urban informality” OR “informality” OR “forms of informality” OR “informal”); and (d) must be published between 2016 and 2020. The number of research articles, including the keywords retrieved from the Scopus database, was recorded.

We ran the second screening against the following inclusion criteria once we had all possible studies: (a) must investigate informal street vending as the main topical theme; (b) must strive to study informal street vending in the global South (i.e., studies that analyse street vending in the global North are beyond the scope of this paper). We identified peer-reviewed research articles using the key terms outlined above, and we excluded a few research articles with no clear methodology. We retrieved a total of 144 studies. After the second screening, a final sample of about 90 studies met the outlined criteria. This number is undoubtedly incomplete as it does not include review articles, books, book chapters, research reports, conference proceedings, and publications written in non-English languages. As such, the actual number of studies is larger than our sample. It is also important to note that excluding non-English studies is a limitation of this review and remains a key task for future research as it runs the risk of reproducing colonial hierarchies of knowledge.

2. Thematic Analysis

In what follows, we explore the ways in which studies on informal street vending engaged with the key questions in relation to eight key themes of (1) gender, (2) typology/types, (3) spatiality of street vending and public space design, (4) health and well-being, (5) individual/collective agency, (6) policy environment, (7) use of technology, and (8) links to other forms of informality.

2.1. Gender

There is a growing body of literature that explores a range of critical questions concerning gender and its impact on street vendors’ everyday experiences and livelihood strategies, politics of gender and legitimating claims to space, gender norms, and women’s mobility and capacity to vend. Recognising the diversity of vendors’ profiles, such as gender composition, is deemed important to ensure that policy responses for gender inclusion, food safety, market siting, and taxation are appropriately nuanced to actually resonate with street vendors [5]. Gender has considerable impacts on vendors’ activities, experiences and their adopted spatial/temporal/relational tactics (i.e., particularly in relation to the goods sold, operation spaces, enforcement agents, and overcrowding) to maintain access to public space [6]. For instance, marginalised female street vendors in Paraguay engage in their own affective politics and target the emotional field of municipal officials through displaying their stresses of poverty, embodied vulnerabilities, and moral maternal responsibilities to legitimate their claims to space [7]. The efficacy of resistance exercised by women street vendors in the informal economy has been evidenced in marginalised and oppressed contexts (e.g., Palestine) [8]. Sowatey et al. [9] highlight that, in Ghana, women vendors’ capacity to forge alliances can transcend linguistics, ethnic, religious, and generational divides, promoting their collective long-term viability. In addition, women vendors articulate the strategic importance of the informal sector in a way that corresponds to the local/national development agenda with a view to lend legitimacy to their vending, hold local authorities accountable, and oppose state’s repressive practices [9].

There is a dilemma in the role of cultural gender norms in relation to women’s capacity to vend in public spaces. There has been empirical evidence from Thailand that shows ethnic minority souvenir female vendors’ migration and participation in tourism have reconstructed cultural gender norms and inequality and have further advanced their economic status as breadwinners of their households [10]. Despite earning an income in the informal economy, women workers may struggle to balance the competing demands of infant feeding and street vending to cope with financial pressures [11]. Nevertheless, Menon [12] highlights the idea of “bounded capability” arguing that women vendors’ overall freedom of mobility and transformational mobility are bounded by socio-cultural or gender norms in Kerala (India). Another study has reported that a large number of men (followed by their families) in South Africa migrate from those contexts that female vending in public space is largely banned, mainly due to cultural norms [13]. Fadaee and Schindler [14] found that despite the authorities’ aggressive crackdowns and the social stigma associated with vending in Tehran, female vendors use and appropriate world-class urban spaces such as women-only metro carriages to earn their livelihoods. In Amankwaa’s [15] terms, gender and gendering of street vending is fluid and situational. This has been linked to the idea that norms in terms of gender-appropriateness of certain occupations are negotiable in response to economic challenges in urban development.

2.2. Typology/Types

This section engages with the question of type with a focus on studies exploring informal street vending types according to certain criteria/characteristics (e.g., mobility in public space, proximity to public/private interface, legitimacy, and illegality). In their study of the dynamics of street vending in a global context, Kamalipour and Peimani [16] suggest that one way of thinking about types of street vending is to focus on the primary questions of mobility (i.e., the degree to which street vendors can move within public space) and proximity to public/private interface (i.e., how street vendors position themselves in relation to the edges of public space). The question of the extent to which informal street vending is fixed in public space has also been at the core of several typologies developed in other studies. In Adama’s [6] typology, street vending is categorised into two main groups of ‘highly mobile with a capacity to adopt spatial/temporal tactics’ and ‘less mobile groups with a capacity to shape informal networks and relations’. Israt and Adam [17] focus on the degree to which street vendors’ use and appropriation of public space become permanent, outlining four types of permanent, semi-permanent, semi-mobile, and mobile. In another study of informal food vendors, Kazembe et al. [18] outline four main types, which include those selling food in marketplaces, street vendors, those selling from tuck shops with fixed structures in informal settlements, and mobile vendors who sell food door-to-door. Charman and Govender [19] introduce three types of permanent structures, including used shipping containers turned into stores, small kiosks, shops with forecourts encroaching onto public space, as well as non-permanent structures ranging from businesses with no or minimal infrastructure to semi-mobile or mobile units.

The existing literature shows that other typologies with a primary focus on mobility have also considered key questions such as regulation, legitimacy, legality, and gender. An example of this is the typology developed by Batréau and Bonnet [20], which focuses on the relationships between mobility and regulation. Recio et al. [21] take into account the questions of legitimacy and illegality to develop their typology, in which the categories of semi-fixed stalls/kiosks and ambulant vendors are linked to the distinction between “legitimate vendors” and the “illegal ambulant hawkers” made by the local officials according to the duration of occupancy. Ojeda and Pino [22] introduce a more extensive typology for street vendors according to their mobility, spatial appropriation (i.e., self-supporting, adherent, superimposed and intervenors), and associated elements (i.e., stall/space type, merchandise, display stand, tools, and packaging). In another attempt, the question of gender is considered in relation to how different types have been classified along the fixed/semi-mobile/mobile continuum [10]. It has been argued that women vendors are more likely to be involved in mobile selling while their male counterparts occupy fixed or semi-mobile premises from stalls or footpaths.

Several other studies investigate the typology of informal street vendors with a primary focus on their locations/settings, use of technology, nationality, and type of food and activity. Suryanto et al. [23] classify street vendors based on the commodities being sold, including three categories of food, goods, and services. Similarly, another study categorises stationary street food vendors according to four dominant food types of fufu, check-check, tuo zaafi, and waakye [24]. According to their field survey, Ghatak and Chatterjee [25] categorise popular ethnic Chinese street foods, including their images, ingredients, nature of food, and after cooking procedure. g’-Ling and Aminuddin [26] further investigate street vendors based on their activity type (retail, services, food and beverage), nationality of the vendors, premise types and structures (permanent and non-permanent), and settings (pavement, main street, back alleys, and five-foot way). As part of their observational data collection, Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] used a structured guide regarding the type of products offered, type of stall (mobile or fixed), and the number of people working at each stall. Raina et al. [28] document the presence of five types of water vendors, including “commercial water source vendors”, “tanker trunk vendors”, “bottled water vendors”, “mobile distributing vendors”, and “retail outlets”, and Amankwaa [15] categorises women and men sachet water vendors into the three work types of seekers, finders, and settlers. Identifying typo-analytical categories (i.e., street-junction typologies) according to the location of food-vending activities, Swai [29] explores the links between these locations and the ways in which activities (e.g., the number of customers and the volume of sales) are performed. Farinmade et al. [30] study different elements of urban informal economic activity, including kiosk and corner shops, cobbler shops, and hairdressing shops. Malasan [31] categorises street vendors into two groups of “conventional” and a “new generation of middle-class” vendors based on the question of the appropriation of new technology. To utilise social infrastructure to sustain livelihood and subtly express their rights in the urban space, the first group form social networks while the latter adopts new technology in their everyday operations.

Other less common typologies of street vendors are based on their licensing, employment, and post-eviction actions for claiming space. A key question here is how licensing street vendors shape the impacts of and responses to state repression and forced evictions. Cuvi [32] divides São Paulo’s street vendors into two categories of unlicensed/licensed. The first type is mobile and full-time (or part-time) and concentrates in vibrant commercial areas/residential neighbourhoods whereas the latter occupies roofed stalls (possibly with wheels). In the face of massive eviction, the unlicensed vendors abandon the field or rely on social networks and/or geographic mobility while the licensed draw on close ties to actors in the political field [32]. Huang et al. [33] explore the questions of what types of labourers in China are involved in street vending and what motivations are behind their involvement. They introduced four types of wage workers, farmers, the unemployed and small merchants, arguing that their motivations are driven by desires to improve livelihood and to attain flexibility and autonomy. In their study of street vending following the evictions in Nigeria, Omoegun et al. [34] identify a four-fold typology of individual street vendor actions for claiming space (i.e., networks and payments, networks only, payments only, and self-help). In addition, there is only one type of collective claim-making following eviction—those vendors working collectively with their peers to identify and claim alternative vending spaces on neighbouring side streets.

2.3. Spatiality of Street Vending and Public Space Design

The critical questions regarding informal street vending and public space design such as contradicting views on the impacts of informal street vendors on the image of an “ordered” city, spatial “recovery” policies, politics of exclusion in public spaces, and failure to identify the vendors’ diverse racial makeup, zoning division and marginalisation of street vendors have become an important area of debate in relation to forms of informal street vending. Drawing on evidence from a broad range of cities in the global South, Kamalipour and Peimani [16] argue that authorities and the elite often consider informal street vending harmful to the image of an “ordered” city. Farinmade et al. [30] find a considerable negative impact of urban informal economic activity on the quality of the built environment in residential areas of Lagos (Nigeria). Another study of informal street vending in Kisumu (Kenya) argues that there is often a confrontation between two legitimacies: that of the poor (for whom the street is a resource) and that of the project promoters of a globalised city image [35]. Criticizing the production of spaces of exclusion and the elites’ visions of the “appropriate” public space use and design in Bogotá, Munoz [36] calls for an understanding of how space, race, and class dialectically inform and shape the everyday experiences of informal street vendors. Malasan [31] finds that the zoning division-informed by the desire to modernise the city and facilitate tourism needs results in the marginalisation of street vendors in Bandung (Indonesia). This also gives rise to the further occupation of urban space by capital-owning actors. For Recio et al. [21], such state-sanctioned land use patterns along with vendors-initiated street norms in transport hubs of many global South cities (e.g., Baclaran in Metro Manila) can co-produce new flows and relations, which can, in turn, improve functional mix in the urban domain.

The importance of exploring the spatial logic of informal street vending, among other issues, has been evident in the recent literature seeking to address the following questions: How does understanding of the relational economy aid in exploring different aspects of the spatial logic of informal street vending? How does the construction of memorial markers impact the meaning of street vending and contribute to the (re)designing of the space? In what ways does understanding the spatiality of street vending shed more light on the sustenance and survival strategies of vendors across different cities? Adopting “the relational economy of informality” as their theoretical framework, Charman and Govender [19] argue that the outcome of the economic development in developing cities such as Johannesburg are spatial processes that impact the distribution and form of various informal business activities and shape the interactions between street vendors and a range of other agents, such as pedestrians, shopkeepers, homeowners, and informal taxis. Pavo [37] argues that night markets can be created as a shared space between street vendors and other stakeholders such as jeepney drivers. Elaborating further on Lefebvre’s notion of conceived space, he argues that the construction of such a memorial market in the case of Davao City (Philippines) after the bombing incident in 2016 changed the meaning of street vending from an economic activity to a symbol of resilience against terrorism. This further outlines the contribution of street vending to the (re)designing of the space [37]. The spatiality of street vending has also been investigated in relation to vendors’ survival strategies. Such strategies include the capacity to strategically locate their business in places with a greater number of customers, close to transport (with ease of transporting stock and access to people using PT services), and close to supermarkets/large stores. Operation in multiple locations to access more customers and reduce the risk of confiscation of goods are also seen as survival strategies [13]. Kazembe et al. [18] discuss spatial clustering as a key strategy adopted by those vendors operating outside the open markets with the aim of constraining the capacity of the police to evict vendors. As a part of the strategy, vendors cluster in large groups along roadsides, on public lands, at bus stops, and street corners.

There have been some attempts at understanding the dynamics of street vending in relation to the built environment features. The key questions here are about what relationships emerge between different forms of informal street vending and urban morphologies, and to what extent physical characteristics and design of public space can enable or constrain activities of street vendors. For Kamalipour and Peimani [16], it is of key importance to investigate the ways street vending takes place in relation to the urban morphology—particularly the edges of public space where public/private interfaces enable or constrain exchange and appropriation. Israt and Adam [17] explore the physical features of public spaces that impact street vending activities and users’ perceptions of public space with a focus on sociability, uses and activities, mobility and accessibility, safety, comfort, and image. To explore the dynamics of informal vending activities, Swai [29] maps streets with open restaurants, taking into account some spatial qualities of food-vending places concerning design and materials. Suryanto et al. [23] explore the spatial arrangement of vendors in an Indonesian street market, particularly in relation to the location of vending spaces, type of goods and storage/parking/loading areas. Ojeda and Pino [22] make an original contribution by arguing that street vendors’ conflicts and socio-spatial disputes over public space in Valparaíso (Chile) are associated with their spatial appropriations, including the size and form of vending stalls and their respective locations. There has also been empirical evidence from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) showing that the average pedestrian density varies in relation to the flow of pedestrians, presence of customers interacting with vendors, location and width of vending stall and width of sidewalks [38].

A key feature of informal street vending is its capacity to work as a temporary intervention at the micro-scale to transform and revitalise those inactive edges of public space which have been produced through formal processes of urban development [16]. g’-Ling and Aminuddin [26] find that street vending contributes to the kinaesthetic experience of the street, walkability, and lively outdoor atmosphere in the public realms of Kuala Lumpur. It has been argued that the knowledge mobile street vendors collect from their experiences in streets can transform public space into a market [39]. The creation of this zone of economic potential as an “epistemic landscape” in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) has been argued to span the spatiotemporal topography of the city. In her study of the modalities and materialities of street vending in the planned city of Islamabad (Pakistan), Moatasim [40] explores the question of how the spatial practices, architectural forms, and aesthetics associated with street vending link to the long-term sustenance of ordinary informal space. She further discusses the ways in which temporary building practices present an opportunity to develop an urban design paradigm that enables strategies of survival and provisionality within the formal planning and construction practices. A poor understanding of the spatial logic of street vending, as argued by Kamalipour and Peimani [16], can lead to poor design and policy interventions. Huang et al. [41] note that policy makers should consider the question of to what degree formalisation by spatial immobilization has considered the spatial/non-spatial attributes of street vending. This is linked to the idea that vendors need not only a workspace but also a relational space that enables subtle links with customers [41]. Martínez et al. [42] also find that offering permitted areas in public space and providing urban design innovations that afford vendors opportunities to sell and conduct their economic activities should be on the agenda of city planning. Thus, any public space policy intervention should consider the segmentation and diversity of street vendors which vary spatially.

2.4. Health and Well-Being

The role of health and well-being in relation to street vending has been documented in several studies seeking to address questions about the relations between social and physical features of informal workplaces and their impacts on the health of street vendors, vendors’ perception of their work as a dignified lifestyle and its impacts on the well-being of individuals and society, and government subsidies to enable vendors’ access to health care. Ko Ko et al. [43] find that street vendors’ exposure to occupational health and work-related stress in Yangon (Myanmar) are influenced by the physical and social contexts of their informal workplaces (public spaces and homes). Bernal-Torres et al. [44] argue that street vendors in Bogotá view their work as a dignified lifestyle and honourable activity which contributes to society’s well-being despite the existing social stigmas that society attaches to informal street vending. In another study of three different contexts including Colombia, Peru, and Kenya, street vending has been outlined as a transformative creative entrepreneurial activity that improves individual well-being through self-determination, productivity and freedom, as well as collective well-being through spreading service, acting on contextual instability and legitimising survival [45]. There have also been some studies investigating government subsidies available to street vendors to help with the financing of universal health coverage and enabling access to health care. Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] find that the government provides informal street vendors in Cali (Colombia) with free or subsided access to health care. Okungu and McIntyre [46] argue that informal sector entities in Kenya are primarily unsustainable, meaning that the majority of premium contributors will not be consistent in payment and, therefore, will require government subsidies to support the financing of universal health coverage (UHC).

There have been contradictions regarding the ways in which street vending is viewed in different contexts, particularly in relation to food safety and hygiene practices. According to their observations and inquiries, Ghatak and Chatterjee [25] find negative results regarding the food safety and hygiene practices of street vendors in Kolkata as the key processes of food vending such as food handling, serving, and storage were not carried out adequately. Additionally, a majority of vendors’ business locations were outlined as contaminated spaces. Birgen et al. [47] find that street food vendors in Nairobi County often work under unhygienic conditions, which indicate a potential health hazard to handlers and consumers mainly due to the high presence of pathogenic bacterial counts in the street-vended chicken products. Contrastingly, Ukenna and Ayodele [48] find that the overall health benefits of sustainable street food in southeast Nigeria outweigh the nuisance and perceived hygiene practices of street food vending. According to Tawodzera [13], food vendors in Cape Town use a range of methods to sell only food that is appropriate for customers and to trace problematic food—the expiry dates, the look and smell of the food items, and the best-before dates. In another study, it is argued that legitimising street food vending operated by landless farmers in Nanjing (China) has the capacity to enable a vibrant street food culture, enhance urban inhabitants’ dietary choices, and produce a new model to plan for a just urban food space [49]. Kazembe et al. [18] find that despite the dominance of supermarkets in the foodscape of Windhoek (Namibia), informal food vending is a key supplementary source of healthier food for households in informal settlements. Elimination of informal vending can therefore reduce the spatial and economic access to healthier food and create hardships for those households relying on the sector for income generation or for their daily/weekly access to basic elements of the diet. It is also noted in a study of informal street food vending in Kiambu County (Kenya) that food safety and hygiene knowledge and practices are influenced considerably by education level, mobility level of vendors, food safety and hygiene training, public health inspection, and category of vendors (based on the type of food sold) [50]. Despite the state’s claims about executing hygiene training, food licensing, and oversight activities, street food vendors in Nigeria’s secondary cities do not seem to be exposed to these activities (except for the collection of revenue) [5]. As such, regular sensitisation of vendors to food sourcing and hygienic preparation is seen as important as the investment of revenues gathered from vendors into the infrastructure for implementing appropriate food safety practices.

2.5. Individual/Collective Agency

In many studies, the dynamics of informal street vending have been empirically investigated, particularly in relation to vendors’ individual and/or collective agency, which is often manifested in different forms of resistance, negotiation, contestation, protest, and the like. The key questions here are: How can street vendors contest the law, unsettle the power structures, resist hegemonic policies/practices, destabilise elite representations of public space, and adopt a range of defensive tactics and survival strategies? In what ways do street vendors shape collectives to negotiate with local governments on issues such as legal rights to sell in public space and law enforcement? How can the collective agency of street vendors help them gain better access to health and cooperate with city management and local residents? What are the roles that unions, vendor associations, and NGOs can play in enabling street vendors to claim rights to livelihood and resist neoliberal exclusionary policies and practices?

Adama [6] argues that street vendors in Abuja (Nigeria) resist hegemonic practices/policies that threaten their everyday livelihoods. As such, the law is often contested in different forms of appropriation, popular mobilisation and protest, paying fees and bribing local officials and the like [6]. Conceptualising the notion of a “terminal economy” as an interface between Indonesia’s expanding commercial networks and a rural economy, Nerenberg [51] argues that commercial regulation can find support among the ordinary whose livelihoods are relegated to the margins and whose contributions to the regional economy are obscured in contemporary discourses and policies because it offers a means to contest such devaluations. In another study, Joshi [52] highlights the subversive act of street vendors to find a place within the law rather than seeking exemptions to the law amid strong aspirations for a modern world-class Indian city. Street vendors in Mumbai are viewed to deploy ordinary practices—“tactics” and “strategies”—transgressing and bypassing the law, and making arrangements based on small-scale corruption (negotiation between vendors and municipal authorities) and contacts to access and capture public space over which they have few rights [53]. Adama [6] finds that street vendors adopt a range of defensive tactics (e.g., Ready-to-Run tactics, relocating to more secure sites, building informal networks/relations, operating temporarily) to increase their mobility and access to public spaces. Eidse et al. [54] also outline mobility as a key mechanism of everyday resistance for street vendors in Hanoi who continue to sustain their mobile livelihoods despite threats of exclusion and state sanctions. Sabella and El-Far [8] focus on how marginalised Palestinian female street vendors utilise everyday entrepreneurial practices to resist a multitude of adverse political and socio-economic constraints. Sowatey et al. [9] also suggest that an informal marketplace in Accra (Ghana) is a site of power, agency, and active resistance where women vendors shape strategic alliances to support each other and promote collective long-term viability. They have the capacity to portray themselves as legitimate actors in the development of local/national economies and hold local authorities accountable and oppose the state’s repressive practices [9]. Recio [55] finds how collective actions of Manila’s street vendors, or what he calls “grassroots democratic entanglements”, are complex yet contradictory as they unsettle the power structures while at the same time are part of such systems. He further argues that street vendors’ actions are situated between acts of reworking, resilience, and resistance. According to Cuvi [56], the risky and sophisticated strategies of street vendors in São Paulo (e.g., reliance on shared symbolic capital, mobility, bribes, active/passive networking, embeddedness in crowds) to circumvent the legal barriers in tightly regulated post-industrial markets (e.g., Sports mega-events) are linked to their flexible relation to the law and legal norms as well as their experiences of navigating hostile regulatory environments. Focusing on the question of governing urban informality in Kampala (Uganda), Lindell et al. [57] uncover the contradictory and varied agency of street vendors in response to the spatial interventions—eviction (from central areas) and relocation (to “modern” markets)—which include not only resistance and contestation, but also participation in their own spatial enclosure (confinement). In a city such as Dhaka with an authoritarian state structure, collective resistance is too costly for those street vendors whose survival is geared to their continued access to public space [58]. As such, street vendors resort to everyday local politics of coercion, and negotiate with local officials and petty criminals to ensure their temporary livelihood security. Drawing from the experience of street vendors resisting against exclusionary practices of displacement in Mexico City, Crossa [59] argues that thinking about politics of difference, particularly in relation to symbolic discourses of legitimacy to use public realm, matters to how vendors carry out resistance and the ways the post-policy context is materialised. In another study, “social infrastructure” is seen as a means of establishing everyday politics for Indonesian street vendors in order to counter the public’s negative perception of their activities as well as to practice their resistance to eviction and repression embodied in the government’s development agenda [31]. Young’s [60] work on Kampala explores the strategies of street vendors (i.e., employment of individual resistance strategies, co-operation with the local government, and engagement in further organisation) to assert their right to engage in economic activities. Vendors’ economic and social rights are viewed to be deeply rooted in political rights. Gillespie [61] explores the political agency of hawkers in moving beyond individual acts of quiet encroachment and taking collective action in a multiparty liberal democracy (e.g., Ghana) to contest state-led dispossession and defend their access to urban space as a means of reproduction. For Tucker and Devlin [62], the most marginalised vendors comprehend the negotiability of contradictory laws and use the uncertainty of enforcement to make ethical claims about their rights to livelihood in streets, destabilising elite representations of public space, and challenging dominant notions of global urbanism. For instance, Paraguayan street vendors make claims to public space in the spatial and legal ambiguities that produce uncertainty as a structure of feeling [7]. They develop their own affective politics, practices of constrained agency that outline the contingencies of municipal enforcement practices. Tawodzera [13] finds that food vendors’ survival strategies involve strategic locating, operating in multiple locations, changing locations, developing a regular clientele, and extending hours of operation. Moatasim [40] argues that the notion of long-term temporariness is not only a strategy of the state to control people but also reflects the everyday spatial practices of the ordinary to make temporary claims to public space that can last for long periods of time. Kazembe et al. [18] discuss how individual and collective actions of informal vendors interact with consumer behaviour to shape the policy environment.

Focusing on the city of Yangon (Myanmar) where the governance of street vending is based on controlling rather than eliminating, Ko Ko et al. [43] find that collective bargaining can help street vendors and home-based garment workers negotiate with the local governments and gain access to better occupational health and safety rights and services, infrastructure, skill development and credit trainings. For Osiki [63], adopting a collective property rights regime for Nigerian street vendors in public space can enable the recognition of street vending as a legitimate form of work to which labour law is applicable. Drawing on empirical material from case studies in Egypt and Algeria, Bouhali [64] argues that street vendors negotiate the use of commercial streets with those whose degree of informality is less visible (e.g., official traders) to cope with fluctuating and versatile policies, developing self-organised strategies (from hijacking to negotiating) to gain access to and stay in public space. In another study, Fadaee and Schindler [14] find that women’s informal vending in the metro of Tehran is enabled by their interaction with women passengers who alert them when anti-hawking regulations are enforced at certain stations. Ojeda and Pino [22] find a form of social organisation and comradeship—group cohesion—among street vendors with mutual benefits. Brown et al. [65] argue that vendors displayed resilience through small incremental adjustments to their trading patterns or more substantial adjustments to enable them to transcend street disruptions in the wake of uncertainty and conflict (e.g., Arab revolutions). Vendors have been seen to build social bonds and friendships in Valparaíso (Chile), driving the creation of labour unions as one of the most effective ways to obtain a municipal permit [22]. Munoz [36] argues that union becomes a platform for street vendors in Bogotá to claim rights to the city and resist neoliberal exclusionary policies and practices. This entails a process of awakening toward envisioning alternative possibilities for urban futures that moves beyond the state and produce forms of autogestion or self-governance. Recio [55] outlines four factors of institutional issues (disjunctive urban governance), strong kinship bonds, clientelism, and grassroots agency as key in shaping state-vendor relationships and sustaining informal vending in Manila’s urban spaces. Nahar Lata [66], however, discusses vendors’ limited tenure security over public space, limited collective action and organisational capacity to claim their citizenship rights to the city in the oppressive political culture such as Dhaka where NGOs are under state’s constant surveillance. In another study, Omoegun et al. [34] outline the reduced capacity of Nigerian vendors in making collective post-eviction claims to space as a result of the co-option of vendor associations by political authorities. In such cases, vendors use the key mechanism of “payment of levies” to maintain their access to public space [34]. Following extensive negotiation and cooperation to attain shared benefits, vendors and local residents in Indonesia creatively operate a self-organised open-ended system to manage vending and other issues (e.g., utility arrangements, space, circulation) [23]. Amoah-Mensah [67] argues that street vendors adopt strategies including networking, multiple undifferentiated market strategy, convenient products, dying and resurrecting, changing of goods, flexible working hours, sales promotion, cost-based pricing, trade credit, and locational advantage to remain competitive. In another study, Dai et al. [49] find that vendors in Nanjing cooperate with city management officers (rather than confront)—“compensatory governance”. Such informal governance of street food vending aims at compensating the vendors for lost land and farms and can be stabilised through “bottom-up civil society support, deliberation and negotiation with municipal governments” [49] (p. 515). For Boonjubun [68], vendors’ different interests, rights and strategies in coping with eviction require understanding of their diversity, social relations and their relations to the public space. For instance, a religious figure in Bangkok mediates and arbitrates conflicting interests and speaks for vendors in their negotiations with city authorities [68]. Young [69] argues that democratisation and decentralisation reforms under the National Resistance Movement in Kampala initiated a period of political competition in which vendors traded their electoral support for political protection from politicians who often prioritised political survival over policy implementation.

2.6. Policy Environment

Exploring different aspects of policy environment has been the most prevailing theme in the relevant literature. There has been extensive research seeking to explore the policy environment in relation to street vendors. The key questions in this regard include, but are not limited to, the practice of law, regulations and policies, management of public space use, formalisation, institutional issues, effective governance, collaborative space making, administrative, financial and/or security challenges, licensing, informal extortions of payments, and the ungovernability of informal street vending.

Adama [70] explores the question of how the practice of the law as a disciplinary technology is deployed to regulate street vendors and the emergent tensions in the modern city of Abuja. In his investigation to address the question of how ambiguous and changing policy pathways can impact street vending in Johannesburg, Rogerson [71] finds that there is a lack of alignment between the national policies and local policy toward informal street vending, in addition to the disconnect between progressive developmental policy frameworks and repressive restrictive implementation practices. For Racaud [35], contradictions of local policies, national political and legislative frameworks in Kisumu generate ambiguous institutional environments, which give room for conflicts concerning the regulation of trading streets and benefit some actors acting as mediators between vendors and authorities. Tucker and Devlin [62] argue that governing street vendors in Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) works through politics of enforcement marked by uncertainty. This uncertainty characterised by complex contradictory regulations and their negotiable enforcement provides flexibility for state officials in managing street vendors. Tucker [7] also finds that planners strategically deploy narratives of the unplanned city—“city stories”—to justify evictions and promote exclusionary and elite-led urban transformations in Paraguay. City stories of precarious street vendors are diagnostic of power, demonstrating the ways in which local state actors foster legal uncertainty and spatial disorder as a technology of governance [7]. Pezzano [72] outlines an asymmetric system of governance and contradictory double agenda exerted by municipal authorities in the inner city of Johannesburg where the rhetoric of participation is in contradiction with the repressive enforcement of bylaws. This produces a “selective incorporation” of street vendors necessary to the development of a world-class city [72]. te Lintelo [73] argues that “horizontal” contestations within civil society and within the state substantially shape the implementation dynamics of formalisation policies to complement “vertical” state-society struggles in Delhi. Contestants for public authority (e.g., Municipal officials, street vendors, trader associations) exploit official rules, target the internal contradictions of a fragmented state, and affect which forms of informality are condemned or condoned [73]. Rogerson [74] finds that despite a pro-development approach in the recent policy documents towards the role of street vending for the local economy, there is a subtle, but systematic exclusion of street vendors of migrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town’s inner-city. Drawing from the case study of Harare (Zimbabwe), he further argues that policy responses to informal street vending vary from frontal aggression and forced evictions to repressive tolerance within which formalisation is largely supported as a means of extracting revenue flows from informal entrepreneurs [75]. Exploring the question of power struggles within the appropriation of two transitional trade marketplaces (Oran and Cairo), Bouhali [64] argues that, despite the visibility and spatial importance of vendors in reshaping the commercial landscape, authorities waver between de facto tolerance and violent interventions (e.g., massive eviction) to re-establish the urban order at large. In another study, Gillespie [61] discusses violent state-led processes of dispossession to expel informal proletariat (e.g., squatters, vendors) and enclose urban commons in Accra. Authorities see these commons as a hindrance to the transformation of cities into a modern “Millennium City”. Boonjubun [68] finds that attempts to evict informal street vendors from Bangkok’s public spaces (e.g., “reclaiming pavements for pedestrians plan” to maintain public order and cleanliness) often failed to acknowledge vendors’ rights, and resulted in violence, protests, unauthorised mobile vending, and increased surveillance and monitoring by officials. Lindell et al. [57] explore the two dominant (yet seemingly contradictory) spatial strategies—enclosure and expulsion—of governing street vendors, in the context of Kampala’s “transformation agenda” and the recentralisation of authority. The often-overlooked conflicts (e.g., among political elites) within the state may contribute to frustrate such agendas and spatial strategies reliant on the eviction/relocation of street vending [57]. Islam and Khan [76] argue that there is limited government (national, local, city) and community police support regarding street vendors’ entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh and the government often adopts harsh measures against their activities. In his study of the politics of street vending in Kampala, Young [69] finds that shifting power from elected politicians to centrally appointed technocrats gave rise to ambitious urban development and management initiatives with the aim of creating a modern well-organised city. Hence, the practice of street vending—as the antithesis of what Kampala’s city council stands for—was eradicated and forced to face government repression [69].

Nerenberg [51] discusses the question of how patterns of marginalisation, inequality, and morality laced throughout the Balim region’s (Indonesia) commerce have crystallised in forms of distinction, disruption, and regulation in the wake of demands for the recognition of indigenous informal vendors’ contributions to a regional economy. Drawing on the theories of social closure and new institutionalist, Cuvi [56] explores the question of how a policy which granted privileged special rights to disabled and elderly vendors in downtown São Paulo evolved into a decades-long monopoly over street vending licenses. Disabled and elderly licensed vendors could shape political connections and received legal recognition during this time. They subsequently used these assets to preserve their relative advantages during reforms and construct an unequal legacy of social closure [56]. In another study, Munoz [36] argues that urban redevelopment projects and aggressive spatial “recovery” policies in Bogotá’s neoliberal regime remain blind to the diverse racial makeup of street vendors and understand vending as only a classed struggle. This obscures the socio-economic realities encountered by racialised bodies in the public realm.

Using an informal settlement in Dhaka as an explanatory case study, Nahar Lata [66] explores how an authoritarian state denies street vendors’ social/economic/political rights to use public space in certain ways (e.g., enforcing exclusionary regulations and policies, creating “grey spaces” which leaves street vendors under a constant state of uncertainty and threat of eviction/extortion, and enforcing exclusionary development practices). Resnick et al. [5] find that rather than harassment and harsh repression of their activities, Nigerian food vendors operate in an environment of benign neglect, which is infused with low capacity and a high level of opacity in the governance of street vending. In another study, rent-sharing systems—outlined as “functional” for Indian cities yet associated with the continuance of deep inequalities—connect state and non-state actors (with varying degrees of political power, socioeconomic status, and cultural advantage) and co-function with formal planning and regulatory institutions [77]. Yet, such systems and relationships thwart prospects for a democratic, transparent or technocratic urban governance regime. For Young [60], the de-democratisation has restricted the capacity of street vendors in Kampala to assert their political rights and their rights to engage in economic activities, resulting in further vulnerability and marginalisation. Bénit-Gbaffou [78] finds that municipality decisions have largely manufactured the ungovernability of street vending in post-apartheid Johannesburg.

Adopting a more proactive approach to the governance of informal street vending is geared to the understanding of why and in what ways informal economies emerge and grow over time [79]. The insights from Young’s [79] study of informal vending in Kampala suggest the following key objectives for effective governance: to minimise predatory governance and instability; to address the urban divisions caused by colonial planning; to ease the dislocations created by economic liberalisation; to reduce geographic inequalities in development trends, design inclusive taxation regime; and to reformulate incentive structures that support self-interest of state officials. Rogerson [80] finds that national/municipal authorities adopt a more tolerant approach towards street vending in Maputo due to its capacity to provide livelihood for the poor and to avoid potential social unrest triggered by a repressive approach common to many cities in urban Africa. Kazembe et al. [18] argue that the “informalised containment” governance model is a pragmatic response to the realities of the contemporary African cities in the wake of rapid urbanisation, and to acknowledge the contribution of the informal food sector to the urban food system, livelihoods in informal settlements, and reduction in food insecurity. Huang et al. [33] call for an inclusionary policy framework for informal street vending in post-reform China, which differentiates support to various sectors of the vendor group according to the diversity/heterogeneity of their motivations. Discussing violent evictions of street vendors, particularly in South African cities, Tonda and Kepe [81] also highlight the need for sensible urban planning and policy responses that recognise informality as a reality, addressing its potential, and understanding the ordinary’s aspiration for spatial justice and decent livelihoods.

Management of public space use cannot be simply reduced to a zonal localisation but rather should provide a vending ordering plan, which offers specific locations for every vendor [22]. Malasan [31] finds that the zoning division—informed by the desire to modernise the city and facilitate tourism needs—results in the marginalisation of street vendors in Bandung. This also gives rise to more occupation of urban space by capital-owning actors. As such, Farinmade et al. [30] call for adequate consideration of design and planning of urban informal economic activities in land use allocation and built environment operational policies. Moatasim [40] finds that allowing temporary licenses/passes emerges as a creative bureaucratic strategy to regulate informal commerce in the planned modernist city of Islamabad. Here, the state policies towards street vending follow the logic of long-term temporariness. In their study of transport hubs as both mobility nodes and economic spaces for street vendors, Recio et al. [21] outline the importance of socio-spatial issues in crafting inclusive land-use and transport planning/policies. It has been argued that it is important to study the dynamics of small-scale informal transport and to investigate how policies can address the issues about the emerging vending-transport nexus [21].

To reimagine current informal street vending management practices and policies, Charman and Govender [19] outline the importance of focusing on three aspects of the spatial logic of the relational economy, including flexible agility of entrepreneurship, unseen organisational logics, and inclusivity. Drawing upon Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Huang et al. [41] explore how the spatial formalisation programme in Guangzhou, which worked by designating and locating informal street vendors in permitted places, was created by the government to balance the need to control street vending with the need to secure prime urban spaces. It has been argued that a “good formalisation” approach is indispensably based on respect for the naturalness of informal economic activities [41]. In another study, Linares [82] finds that the failed “upgrading” (in socialist/progressive contexts such as Bogotá) and “formalising” (in neoliberal contexts such as Lima) attempts should encourage local policymakers to rethink their view of street vending as an employment problem and further assess their role in walkability, economic development, crime, or neighbourhood revitalisation. In their empirical study of the context, dynamics, and motivations of street vending in Enugu (Nigeria), Onodugo et al. [83] explore the question of possible alternative policy options for managing the challenges of street vendors in the public realm. They note that, given the constant failure of the policy of eviction, planners should review/update the bylaw that considers street vending as a source of livelihood and recognises its contribution as a source of revenue to the government rather than a nuisance to justify repressive actions of hounding, harassment, and eviction. Following the “decongestion” and “beautification” of city centres in neoliberal and semi-authoritarian contexts such as Accra, the development of relocation spaces (formal market) during the post-eviction period can reconfigure the social practices and power relations between street vendors, city dwellers, and urban authorities in space and time [84]. Pavo [37] discusses the question of how the local government in Davao City allotted an area for informal street vendors (as symbols of resilience) to recreate and reclaim the night market space from terror after the bombing incident in 2016. This is seen as collaborative space-making as the market’s design/planning was shaped by the lived experiences of the street vendors. Batréau and Bonnet [20] call the district administration’s policy a “managed informality” resulting in a situation where long-established informal vendors (registered type) in Bangkok control less established groups. District administration aligns its objectives with the objectives of the established vendors to obtain their collaboration, subverting some of the laws [20].

Engaging with the question of nature, operations, challenges, and strategies of informal food vending in Cape Town, Tawodzera [13] finds that vendors face administrative (e.g., excessive competition among food vendors operating in small spaces and between vendors and supermarkets/large stores), financial (e.g., little or no government support scheme/government finance), and security (e.g., theft of goods/crime, and police raids on vendors with no permits and no proper documentation of the confiscated goods) challenges despite playing a vital role in the economy. Another study outlines that everyday challenges (e.g., harassment, workplace insecurity and goods confiscation) are more salient drivers of difficult working conditions among vendors than evictions (according to data from the Informal Economy Monitoring Study) [85]. Legal reforms (e.g., Street Vendors Act in India) and greater transparency in local bylaws and their implementations are required along with a political will to oppose the privatisation of public space by powerful interests [85]. Regarding financial challenges, Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] argue that despite street vendors’ comparatively high incomes and minimal tax burden in Cali, they rely on payday loans offered by moneylenders. Such loans have high interest rates, which increase their indebtedness. Hence, it is highlighted that the government has a crucial role to play to develop a new policy strategy (i.e., an affordable loan platform based on block-chain technology rather than current relocation and control of public space) [27]. To further elaborate on the security challenges, Brown et al. [65] argue that authoritarianism that the Arab revolutions deposed left a vacuum in governance, which gave rise to petty crime and sexual harassment in the absence of strong municipality surveillance and created new serious threats for street vendors.

Local agents of state may also act informally to extort regular payments from vendors in return for access to public space. It has been argued that such beneficial arrangements between street vendors and local sources of power are often in contradiction to the neoliberalising ambition of the state and the very powerful (e.g., senior politicians, wealthy Citizens) to clean up the public space [58]. Joshi [52] finds that Indian street vendors were still being harassed by municipal and police officials during the post-Street Vendors Act era, contributing to an extortionate lower bureaucracy, which sustained its own power through such informal forms of negotiation. Tucker [7] argues that local governing strategies intensify the lived economic insecurities of precarious street vendors in Ciudad del Este. Yet, regulation by ambiguity and dealmaking—political practices supposedly banished by the formalised city—remains the grounds from which vendors make a claim to public space for livelihood.

2.7. Use of Technology

The existing literature shows a growing interest in investigating street vendors in relation to their capacity to use different forms of technology. Particularly, the questions of the extent to which street vendors are competitive in their use of technology or what benefits the adoption of technology innovations (e.g., mobile phone-enabled networks) can offer street vendors have become of central interest. Kaushik and Rahman [86] find that compared to their formal sector counterparts, street vendors in Indian cities often show a lower degree of innovativeness regarding the adoption of self-service technologies, and consumers are often driven by three key correlates of gender, age, and income. Street vendors earn higher incomes although they are less educated than the formal wage earners within the same neighbourhoods [86]. There have been, however, studies outlining the capacity of street vendors in using technology innovations to earn a living. Mramba et al. [87] outline the key technology innovations such as record keeping, social media, customer care applications, and matchmaking that address the daily challenges of street vendors in Tanzania, including unreliable business information, weak business strategies, limited education, poor support structures, and access to capital. For Tsarwe and Mare [88], mobile phone-enabled networks not only help street vendors in Zimbabwe to create social collectives in a complex urban milieu, but also help them to access micro-credit, payments integrated with traditional banking systems, and market intelligence among vendors. Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] further argue that an affordable loan platform with the use of block-chain-based technology is likely to reduce both the transaction cost and the information asymmetry of financial formalisation. In another study, social infrastructure is also highlighted as a means for street vendors in Bandung to build everyday politics [31]. Such infrastructures are not only practised through the establishment of relationships and forms of economic exchange between vendors and different stakeholders (e.g., customers, informal organisers, suppliers) but also through the embracement of new technology [31].

2.8. Links to Other Forms of Informality

While access to and use of public space by street vendors are geared to other forms of informality, we found very few empirical materials concerning the dynamics of street vending in relation to informal settlements [18,47,66] and informal transport [19,21]. For instance, Nahar Lata [66] investigates street vending in the Sattola informal settlement (Dhaka) where dwellers have limited tenure security over land and are under constant eviction threat. Street vendors set up their business using narrow lanes of the informal settlement, the adjacent pavements and streets, or the surrounding well-off areas [66]. Kazembe et al. [18] argue that the informal food sector is often a key supplementary source of healthier food for the poor and food-insecure households in the informal settlements of Windhoek (Namibia) compared to those sold in supermarkets chains. Charman and Govender [19] explore the spatial economy of informality in settlements on the periphery of metropolitan areas in Johannesburg, with the predominance of informal street vending and informal transport (e.g., taxis), focusing on three aspects of flexible agility of entrepreneurship—unseen, informal organisational logics, and inclusivity of the environment and social processes. Recio et al. [21] argue that there are conflictive socio-spatial interactions involving street vendors and jeepneys (small-scale public transport) in the context of the Metro Manila’s Baclaran district. The prevalence of certain conditions (e.g., street customers, congested roads, limited jeepneys) generated by street vendors in public space have given rise to the use of some indigenous transport modes (pedicab and tricycle).

3. Conclusions and the Ways Forward

In this paper, we have provided a structured review of the relevant literature on street vending with the aim to reflect on how far we have come in this regard. We have identified a range of key questions as part of the outlined themes of gender, typology/types, the spatiality of street vending and public space design, health and well-being, individual/collective agency, policy environment, use of technology, and links to other forms of informality and further explored the existing body of knowledge in relation to the identified themes and questions. While some of these themes might inevitably engage with intersecting and overlapping conditions, they work as tools for a better understanding of dynamics of informal street vending. In this section, we mainly focus on the way forward by outlining emerging questions associated with certain themes, including education, street food marketing, national security, race/ethnicity, unfair practice among street vendors, tourism, violence/crime/armed conflict, xenophobia, motivations, ethics/care, temporality, and voting rights/electoral support, to inform future research on informal street vending. These emerging questions are identified as relatively understudied areas of research which will be followed by a brief discussion of a range of less explored geographies of informal street vending.

While the importance of education has been outlined in some street vending studies, there is scope for more empirical and theoretical work. The key questions of shrinking formal job market and educated individuals involved in street vending, the relations between vendors’ educational attainment and the profitability of their business, and impacts of business management training on street vendors have become the focus of the recent literature. Tawodzera [13] notes that informal food vending has become a seminal source of income even for the well-educated, which reflects the lack of formal job opportunities. Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] find that, on average, street vendors are less educated than the general public in the city. The distinction between vendors with low educational background and those with higher formal education has further been highlighted in some other studies. For instance, Martínez et al. [42] argue that street vendors from Downtown (established sector, better working conditions) have higher educational attainment than their counterparts in the market, i.e., entry sector/gateway for the less educated, recent rural migrants. Educational levels are positively linked with estimated profits. Thus, it is further outlined that policy interventions must consider such diversity and segmentation of street vending that vary spatially [42]. In another study, Osei Mensah et al. [24] find that vendors with low or no formal educational background are less likely to appreciate the benefits of business management training and, as such, less likely to participate than their counterparts with higher formal education. It is also argued that the distance between vendors’ premises and training centres negatively affect their probability of participation in the management training programmes.

Street food marketing and tourism are among the less explored themes. The existing relevant literature has mainly discussed the questions concerning marketing capabilities of informal street vendors and their impact on sustaining a competitive performance, marketing strategy development for sustainable street food marketing, street vendors’ experience of the tourism-poverty alleviation link, and gendered mobilities of ethnic minority street vendors in urban tourist areas. Following the shifting street food consumption paradigm towards more sustainable street food, Ukenna and Ayodele [48] provide a perspective toward investigating an emergent street food consumer patronage behaviour (or street food marketing) applying the extended theory of planned behaviour. Khan [89] further outlines the marketing capabilities of informal microenterprise street food vending in Bangkok as the following: ability to provide food at a more affordable price, deliver it in a shorter time, choose a convenient location, flexible business hours, fulfil customers food requirements, and demonstrate food in front of customers. Truong [90] argues against the views that depict street vendors as a problem affecting the image of tourist cities, mainly because such views overlook the hard work that vendors perform and the critical challenges they encounter. Whether tourism can alleviate poverty depends on vending experience, market competition, tourists’ demand, type of goods, their relations with the security staff patrolling tourist sites, and government’s ban on vending. Trupp and Sunanta [10] discuss that the informal sector of the urban ethnic tourism economy—in which souvenir women vendors are predominantly involved—has been associated with hard physical work, bad payment, simple technology, low formal education background, non-high risks of getting fined, lack of social capital, lack of economic resources, and non-registered economic activities.

There have been some attempts in the recent literature to address certain questions concerning violence, crime/armed conflict, national security, and xenophobia. Hove et al. [91] outline the negative impacts of “illegal” street vending on human security, which endanger national security, including lawlessness, public health hazards, environmental pollution, and arguably violent mass protests that attract police violence and social unrest. However, one may become sceptical about the findings that view street vending merely as a threat to the human and national security. It is important to note that reductionist approaches to forms of informality without considering their productive and adaptive capacities can only worsen the existing condition [92,93,94]. Martínez et al. [42] and Martínez and Rivera-Acevedo [27] find higher exposure to the armed conflict, violence (e.g., having to pay a bribe to criminal gangs, homicide and drug selling), and crime of formal and informal works is linked to the key segmentation and heterogeneity when comparing different street vending sites. Connor and Charway [95] find that informal street vending is not only a key driver of economic empowerment and equality but also that of difference and xenophobic attitudes, particularly towards immigrant vendors.

There has been an emerging body of research on race/ethnicity and ethics/care, addressing a range of key questions: How does class, race, and space dialectically inform street vendors’ lived experiences? How is gender hierarchy reconstructed in ethnic minority street vending? In what ways can sites of informal street vending become key spaces for the exploration of consumer ethics? Munoz [36] argues that it is important to understand the relationship between race and class in discourses of “recovering” Bogotá’s public space where black racialised street vendors remain largely invisible and are marked by discourses of crime, displacement, and undesirability in public space. In another study, Trupp and Sunanta [10] argue that urban ethnic tourism in Thailand primarily reproduces gender inequality in the division of labour, souvenir production, and distribution. Mobile street vending enables ethnic minority females to become breadwinners of households while reinforcing gender asymmetry [10]. Taking inspiration from the idea of ordinary ethics, Daya [96] rethinks informal trading spaces as key spaces of ethical economic action—as spaces of consumption where the ethical producer-consumer relationship is key to the business of trade.

There have been a few studies in the recent literature engaging with the questions of the composition and dynamics of street vendors’ motivations particularly in relation to the broader socioeconomic context. Huang et al. [33] discuss the heterogeneity of street vendors’ motivations in Chinese cities, which are driven by their responses to multiple socio-economic forces, including poor working conditions, rural poverty, poor remuneration of jobs in urban areas, the difficulty of maintaining a formal business, desire to achieve flexibility, and autonomy. Moyo et al. [97] argue that beyond the simplistic assumption of escaping from poverty, exploitation, discrimination, and devaluation of their qualifications, immigrants have resorted to informal street vending due to less or no stringent controls, the possibility of higher incomes, and economic gains.

The recent literature has also sought to explore the dynamics of temporality and the key questions of informal street vendors’ practices in relation to the spatiotemporal topography of the city, temporal and material features of the ordinary forms of street vending, and a time-space sharing design approach to manage street vending and democratise the access to and control of public space. Malefakis [39] argues for an ethnographically informed analysis of the ways in which street vendors in Dar es Salaam orient their work routines and creative practices in consistency with the temporal organisation of socio-economic life in the city. To create market situations in public space, street vendors should continually scrutinise, understand, and engage with the challenges generated from the relationships between elements that constituted the market, goods, users, built environment, and the temporal dynamics of vending locations [39]. Using the concept of “long-term temporariness”, Moatasim [40] argues that the sustained existence of street vending is geared to the routine maintenance of the links between its temporality and materiality, noticeable in not only everyday spatial practices of the urban poor, but also official procedures regarding informal street vending. Recio et al. [21] call for a design approach, focusing on time-sharing of space, which can avoid potential congestion and excessive commercialisation of public space generated by the vendors’ use of streets.

While street vendors’ voting rights and participation in decision-making processes have been acknowledged in the literature, there have been limited empirical studies in this regard. Nahar Lata [66] outlines that the rights of Bangladeshi street vendors as citizens to participate in local governance processes and decision making (including voting rights) and access local elected political representatives are restrained by social/political/institutional factors. It is argued that politicians in Kampala rely on street vendors for their electoral support in exchange for maintaining a certain level of political protection for these informal actors [79]. Nonetheless, when political circumstances change, state officials can prioritise their self-interests, seek to repress informal street vendors, and practice exclusionary forms of urban management/development.

Exploring informal street vending can considerably benefit from more theoretical and empirical explorations. We argue that adopting certain theoretical frameworks, such as assemblage thinking [98], can effectively work as a theoretical lens or toolkit for exploring the dynamics of street vending as an emergent whole or heterogeneous ensemble that cannot be simply reduced to the aggregate properties of its constituent parts as it is characterised by interconnectivity and flows between the parts. Assemblage thinking can also serve as a theoretical framework for articulating the relations between informal and formal practices in the city since it offers a range of twofold concepts for exploring such relationships across multiple scales [94,99,100,101]. Exploring and discussing the research design approaches and methods adopted in the relevant literature with a focus on their capacities, limitations, and ethical considerations can pave the way for future research.

In this paper, we have also found the extent to which many countries have remained understudied compared to certain countries such as South Africa, India, and Nigeria, to name a few. The existing body of relevant knowledge can be developed further by undertaking more theoretical and empirical research focusing on a range of case studies across specific countries that have remained underexplored. Exploring multiple and different case studies can also provide a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of street vending. What remains as a critical gap in the existing literature is the investigation of informal street vending in a global context by exploring multiple case studies across different cities and countries. This may include South-South, South-North, and North-North comparative studies. Such studies can effectively enrich the existing literature by unravelling some key differences and similarities in a global context, and further contribute to the development of informality thinking and street vending literature.

One of the key implications of this paper is about its capacity to identify certain questions and themes that have been at the centre of scholarly discussions and outline the less studied areas in the relevant literature on informal street vending. While a considerable body of knowledge exists on different aspects of policy environment and individual/collective agency, there is scope for exploring such central themes across different contexts to enable more comparative studies. Our understanding of the typology/types and spatiality of street vending and public space design can also benefit from more theoretical and empirical research, which can effectively inform relevant interventions in relation to the built environment. In this paper, we also pointed to certain themes such as gender, use of technology, and links to other forms of informality that have remained relatively underexplored. As such, more empirical research is needed to advance an evidence-based understanding of the ways in which forms of informal street vending work in relation to other forms of informality, such as informal settlement and informal transport across different scales and contexts.