Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Transforming Ethnic Communities in Los Angeles

This talk examines the social worlds of young Latino street vendors as they navigate the complexities of local and federal laws prohibiting both their presence and their work on street corners. Known as fruteros, these vendors sell fruit salads out of pushcarts throughout Los Angeles and are part of the urban landscape. Drawing on six years of fieldwork, this research shows how vendors’ paisano (hometown compatriot) social networks are structured to both benefit and exploit its members. While much of the work on newly arrived Latino immigrants focuses on the ways in which their social networks allow them to survive, Rosales argues that this understanding of ethnic community simplifies the complex ways in which social networks and social capital work. This book sheds light on those complexities and offers the concept of the “ethnic cage” to explain both the promise and pain of community.

Rocío Rosales is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to this appointment she was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA in 2012 and received her A.B. in Sociology (cum laude) with a certificate in Latin American Studies from Princeton University. Her research interests include international migration, immigrant and ethnic economies, race and ethnicity, law and society, Latinas/os in the US, and qualitative research methods. Her book based on ethnographic research among Los Angeles street vendors is forthcoming with UC Press. For information about Prof. Rosales' work visit: https://sites.uci.edu/rosales/

This event is part of the ILRLR/ICL workshop series with support provided by Latina/o Studies Program.