ABSTRACT
This chapter presents informal street work be understood as an important constituent of urban politics. It attempts to uncover the nature of the politics, highlights its multifaceted, multilayered and multiscalar character in a particular urban setting. The multifaceted nature of the politics of street work can best be illustrated by the multiple modes of political interaction between the vendors' association and the bureaucratic and political elite, which defied categorizations into either antagonistic or convivial relations. The multilayered politics involves exclusions and divisions between different groups of street workers – as will be uncovered in relation to market and pavement vendors, as well as men and women. The chapter examines the experiences and political implications of participation in a transnational network. The politics of informal work can be seen as a multiscalar politics, illustrated in the case by participation in a transnational associational network.
