Reconfiguring Margins: Secondhand Clothing and Street Vending in the Philippines

Abstract

Throughout the Philippines, the recent contraction of the global economy has challenged the livelihoods of the country's urban poor. This is particularly evident in Baguio City, northern Luzon's administrative center. Here, women, building on their history as the country's foremost public market traders, have established viable street vending businesses selling different goods such as imported secondhand clothing. The meaning of secondhand clothing worldwide has shifted from its humble origin as an inexpensive functional product fulfilling the clothing needs of the poor to a useful yet fashionable commodity pursued across class and space. In this article, I use women's street-based sales of secondhand clothing to argue that vendors activate this frontier trade to challenge the state's idea of normative economic pursuits thereby unsettling taken-for-granted notions of formal/informal work, appropriate space use, and the meaning of commodities. Employing customary and mainstream business practices, vendors re-craft this globally traded commodity to enable local livelihood and personalized identity constructions. I suggest that by refashioning public streets into dynamic relational sites, Baguio City vendors center previously marginalized practices to assert their place as legitimate actors in arenas of public power that have largely excluded them from the privileges of modern citizenship and rights to livelihood.

Keywords:

• street vending
• secondhand clothing
• informality
• gender
• legality
• Philippines