Since Vietnam’s doi moi economic reforms were first implemented in the late 1980s, petty trading activities have reappeared and now flourish, gaining increasing visibility on the nation’s town and city streets. Today, mobile street vendors have become an integral feature of the cityscape of the national capital, Hanoi. In recent years, however, state discourses about the “modernization” (hien dai hoa) and “civilization” (van minh) of the urbanizing capital have resulted in various bans on the activities of these itinerant vendors who are increasingly becoming associated with notions of backwardness, underdevelopment, and disorder. In light of these significant processes, in my field research I will analyze how key actors including global investors, national policy makers, and local officials participate in managing and responding to mobile street vendors in Hanoi. Thus, I focus in particular on the daily encounters and experiences of mobile street vendors with representatives of the state. Besides an ethnographic account of vendors’ trading activities, I will also scrutinize aspects of belonging and social stratification.

The alternative ‘diverse economies’ vision of J. K. Gibson-Graham and supporters regarding how people make a living outside the capitalist framework, lists street vendors and informal economies of the global South as potential components. This article critiques the relevance of this vision for street vendor livelihoods in a politically socialist locale, albeit one embracing neo-liberal modernity. In their drive to create a modern, ‘civilised’ capital, Vietnam’s central government and Hanoi’s municipal authorities have a particular image of security, orderliness and development. Street vendors disrupt this picture and since 2008 have been negotiating a ban in many preferred locales. Building upon urban livelihoods, everyday politics and resistance concepts, an analysis is made of in-depth interviews with itinerant and fixed-stall vendors to unravel their heterogeneous responses to such revanchist policies. Despite subtle covert and overt resistance tactics, the study reveals that celebrated ‘community economies’ and alternative economic visions remain rare in this context.

The alternative ‘diverse economies’ vision of J. K. Gibson-Graham and supporters regarding how people make a living outside the capitalist framework, lists street vendors and informal economies of the global South as potential components. This article critiques the relevance of this vision for street vendor livelihoods in a politically socialist locale, albeit one embracing neo-liberal modernity. In their drive to create a modern, 'civilised' capital, Vietnam's central government and Hanoi's municipal authorities have a particular image of security, orderliness and development. Street vendors disrupt this picture and since 2008 have been negotiating a ban in many preferred locales. Building upon urban livelihoods, everyday politics and resistance concepts, an analysis is made of in-depth interviews with itinerant and fixed-stall vendors to unravel their heterogeneous responses to such revanchist policies. Despite subtle covert and overt resistance tactics, the study reveals that celebrated 'community economies' and alternative economic visions remain rare in this context.

In 2008, Hanoi’s municipal government banned street vending from numerous sites, significantly delineating and redefining access to urban space. The ban privileges certain forms of movement by designating streets and sidewalks for the fluid movements of “modern” transportation, rather than the staccato “traditional” mobilities of street vendors who stop frequently to ply their trade. In this article, we explore the everyday mobilities of Hanoi’s vendors in light of this ban, focusing on the careful negotiations vendors undertake to secure rights to the city’s streets and highlighting how vendor mobilities are socially, politically, and culturally produced and reworked. We combine Cresswell’s six facets of mobility with Kerkvliet’s everyday politics to form a hybrid everyday politics of mobility. In doing so we highlight vendors’ daily experiences of mobility and the politics affecting itinerant vendors compared to their stationary counterparts. Based on eight months of fieldwork in Hanoi, incorporating interviews, mobile ethnographic methods, and vendor journaling, this article contributes an in-depth examination into the politics of (im)mobility in the Global South, considering how mobility is framed and produced in a distinctly socialist context. By focusing on the everyday politics of vending in Hanoi and the tactics undertaken to carve out mobilities in the urban landscape, we illustrate these vendors’ daily lived realities as well as their connections with and contestations of local, regional, and global political–economic systems. We find mobility is a mechanism of resistance, as vendors strive to maintain mobile livelihoods despite threats of state sanctions and exclusion.

In 2008, Hanoi’s municipal government banned street vending from numerous sites, significantly delineating and redefining access to urban space. The ban privileges certain forms of movement by designating streets and side- walks for the fluid movements of “modern” transportation, rather than the staccato “traditional” mobilities of street vendors who stop frequently to ply their trade. In this article, we explore the everyday mobilities of Hanoi’s vendors in light of this ban, focusing on the careful negotiations vendors undertake to secure rights to the city’s streets and highlighting how vendor mobilities are socially, politically, and culturally produced and reworked. We combine Cresswell’s six facets of mobility with Kerkvliet’s everyday politics to form a hybrid everyday politics of mobility. In doing so we highlight vendors’ daily experiences of mobility and the politics affecting itinerant ven- dors compared to their stationary counterparts. Based on eight months of fieldwork in Hanoi, incorporating inter- views, mobile ethnographic methods, and vendor journaling, this article contributes an in-depth examination into the politics of (im)mobility in the Global South, considering how mobility is framed and produced in a distinctly socialist context. By focusing on the everyday politics of vending in Hanoi and the tactics undertaken to carve out mobilities in the urban landscape, we illustrate these vendors’ daily lived realities as well as their connections with and contestations of local, regional, and global political–economic systems. We find mobility is a mechanism of resistance, as vendors strive to maintain mobile livelihoods despite threats of state sanctions and exclusion.

This paper explores the politics of mobility for a group of rural inhabitants attempting to diversify their livelihoods in an especially prescribed environment, namely ethnic minority street vendors living and working in upland socialist Vietnam. These Hmong, Yao and Giáy individuals face a political environment where access and trade rights shift on a near-daily basis because of the impulses of state officials, and where ethnicity is central to determining who gets to be mobile and how. We analyse three groups of itinerant vendors—those vending on the streets of an upland tourist town, the mobile minority wholesalers who supply them and other traders, and vendors who trek with Western tourists—to reveal the nature of this trade environment, while also highlighting the ways in which ethnic minority vendors negotiate, work around and contest vending restrictions in numerous innovative ways. We find that this focus on the micro-geographies and everyday politics of mobility is essential to understanding how rural Global South livelihoods are fashioned and diversified, in this case revealing specific relationships and negotiations regarding resource access, ethnicity, state authority and livelihood strategies.

In this chapter, we aim to analyse the mobility tactics that itinerant street vendors in Hanoi draw upon to access potential customers and evade prosecution. While doing so, we highlight how vendors’ knowledge of the city and access to customers is “constructed in and through mobile interactivity” (Brown & Durrheim, 2009: 916). We outline our conceptual framework next, drawing on mobility debates that are centrally concerned with how “place and context” shape experiences of movement (Curl et al., 2018: 174). We then emphasise how mobile methods can uncover intricate relationships among people, perceptions, experiences and specific places. We detail the particular ‘go-along’ method we adopted, that complemented our stationary conversational interviews and participant observation. This ‘go-along’ approach provided us with nuanced understandings of vendor tactics and everyday decision-making and allowed us to analyse the spatiality, temporality and significance of their routines. While finding clear evidence that “speeds, slownesses, and immobilities are all related in ways that are thoroughly infused with power and its distribution” (Cresswell, 2010: 21), we also explore how vendors draw on a range of dynamic everyday tactics (following De Certeau, 1984), to continue to reach customers and avoid state sanctions.

In this paper, I want to examine the street as a political space in Vietnam on which both people and state relentlessly claim to exert their presence and power. For government, the assertion of authority is demonstrated through a series of restricting policies and enforcement of local officials. On the other hand, citizen find their initiatives to cope with the governmental control using both explicit and implicit everyday tactics. This phenomenon has usually been conceptualized as ‘resistance’ by scholars. By critically reviewing concepts of ‘everyday resistance’ and ‘hidden transcripts’ of James C. Scott, this article aims to argues that in the context of street, though the correspondence between state and society does point toward a dichotomy of two sides: dominant and subordinate, the situation is not simple as it manifests. The framework of resistance, in this context, only helps to see a part of the general political picture. In terms of structure, I firstly review the concept of Scott and discuss it in the context of Vietnam. I then suggest another perspective to have a better understanding of the relationship between state and society.