Reading for difference on the street: De-homogenising street vending in Mexico City

In cities across the Global South, neoliberal urban policies have unfolded through a series of projects that take the streets, plazas and other public spaces of the city as central arenas to booster the neoliberal project. This has entailed the removal and displacement of groups who depend on these spaces for their daily survival, for example street vendors and other participants of the so-called informal economy. This paper draws from and seeks to contribute to work on the urban politics of informality in the Global South. My objective is to broaden our understanding of informality and resistance in cities by recognising difference and de-homogenising so-called informal activities, particularly street vending and vendors. To make this argument, I draw from the experience of resistance movements against displacement carried out by street vendors in Mexico City as a result of the implementation of a series of exclusionary policies implemented by city authorities. I demonstrate that thinking about difference matters to the way in which vendors carried out their resistance strategies and to how the post-policy context materialised.