Qualitative discourse analysis uncovers systemic exclusion and resilient agency among immigrant informal traders, highlighting the necessity of urban governance reforms.
Key Points
To examine how structural xenophobia, municipal governance, and public policies collectively produce precarity and shape everyday resistance among African immigrant informal traders.
Conducted a qualitative, literature-based critical discourse analysis of secondary sources.
Evaluated academic literature, municipal legal frameworks, policy documents, and media reports through the lenses of structural violence, necropolitics, and acts of citizenship.
Immigrant traders experience institutional precarity driven by ambiguous legal statuses, municipal criminalisation, and the strategic exploitation of xenophobia by political figures.
Informal traders assert presence and agency in contested urban spaces through mutual aid networks, resilience strategies, and everyday socio-economic practices.