Appropriation and Uses of Law Field in Labor Vindications of Informal Street Vendors of Bogotá

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the relationship between law as a field of discourses and practices, and the formation and accumulation of semi-stationary street vendors’ symbolic capitals in Bogotá (Colombia). Such relationship can show the consolidation of a labor vindication through the appropriation and strategic reinterpretation of certain juridical categories and resources seen as supporting arguments for the exercise of an economic activity in the public space that opposes the District’s Government’s (formalization) and Metropolitan Police’s (recovery of public space) interests. For this purpose, the results of an ethnographic fieldwork that analyze the conceptual development of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence and the daily reality of the vendors in their work spaces show a subjective construction given by the juridical appropriation, the social networks and the use of a territoriality sense negotiated in street commerce. The conjunction of these elements provided an insight on the construction of a political-juridical claim and a labor vindication that rises as an alternative to the local government’s formalization offer. This article mainly contributes to socio-juridical studies with its ethnographic methodology applied to the juridical dimension and the symbolic effects of law on conflictive urban scenarios.