ILPC 2027

Though local authorities treat street hawkers as an unwelcome group, street hawking in China, as a part of informal economy, is an important strategy for rural-to-urban migrants to make a living in cities. The conflicts between street hawkers and city management policies are discussed by Chinese scholars, however, usually in a management perspective, and the interaction between hawkers and policies are ignored. Based on the one and a half years’ field work in JingXi, a typical area of street hawkers in GuangZhou, this article will illustrate the how the changing policies, from a strict limitation to combining with dredging and blocking, then to a strict demolition again, influenced the living strategy of hawkers. On one hand, it shows the interaction of various stakeholders in the street hawking practices. On the other hand, it analyses how the demolished policies of a neo-liberal capitalist city failed by the everyday life resistance of ordinary lower working class.