Hanoi street vendors on the move: Itinerant vending tactics and mobile methods in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Abstract
The ‘Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan to 2030 and Vision to 2050’ promotes the modernisation and urbanisation priorities of Vietnam’s capital city through a range of urban interventions and infrastructure projects. Concurrently, many rural-to-urban migrants continue to seek informal employment opportunities in Hanoi, including work as itinerant street vendors. Yet street vending is far from the municipal and central governments’ visions for the capital city, and vendors often face serious fines and reprisals from the city’s ward police. In this chapter, we analyse the mobility strategies that itinerant street vendors draw upon to secure their livelihoods. We situate our research in mobility literature that is centrally concerned with understanding the ways by which meaning is ascribed to movement. Drawing on ‘walking-while-talking’ interviews conducted in 2018, as well as stationary conversational interviews and …
