Stigma And Status Of Street Vendors In New York

INTRODUCTION
“Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one.” -Thomas Perez, United States Secretary of Labor (U.S. Department of Labor Blog, 2014, June 30)

There are about 2,000 of street vendors on the street in New York providing goods and services ranging from food to daily needs for an affordable price. Recently, NYC has become a more and more difficult place for them to stay on the street.
The strict regulations, expensive cost and especially long waiting lists to receive permissions are pushing many street vendors off the street. Many street vendors struggle to receive the permits.

This essay attempts to analyze and find a possible solution to this problem. I will show that liberating the permits for street vendors especially for food sellers in NYC can be beneficial from anthropological point of view. In order to do this, this essay will be divided into two parts. The first part mainly analyzes the circumstances, the cultural symbols or stigma and status of the street vendors in the city. In the second part I will attempt to draw policy implications from this that could improve to the current

As Margaret Grey mentions in “Labor and the Locavore,” (p. 62, 63), workers’ fear of their illegal status and being deported back to their home country affects their decisions and often pushes them to accept compromising conditions. This leads to “self-sacrifice” that narrows the possibility for long term planning of future (Labor and Locavore, 2013, October 25). For a long time this has posed a lot of difficulties for them to unionize and raise their voices. However, this seems to be changing as the Street Vendors Project has launched and the people have been given a voice in their conditions (The New York Time Magazine, 2013, May