Creating Safe Spaces: Strategies and unintentional consequences of Latina street vendors in Los Angeles

Abstract

Based on 66 interviews with child street vendors (ages 10 -18) and their parents and two-and-a-half years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article demonstrates that the work that girls and boys do as street vendors both perpetuates and challenges gendered expectations among Latino families in Los Angeles. While both sons and daughters of Mexican and Central American immigrants engage in the family business, it is more common for girls to help their parents than their brothers. This article shows that girls take on greater work responsibilities in the street vending business. The girls in this study are performing a type of work that has been gendered as feminine (food preparation) and they are doing this gendered work on the street, a space that has been gendered as masculine and inappropriate for señoritas (virginal women). Paradoxically, while the street is more appropriate for males, in this context, male vendors of all ages report more instances of violence from gang members and their peers. The freedom that their male privilege affords them, also leaves them unprotected from the family and more vulnerable to street