Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets as Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure

Authors

• Raji Srinivasan, University of Texas at AustinFollow
• Maria C. Merino, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de MexicoFollow

Document Type

Research Article - Refereed

Abstract

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: street markets serve stakeholders lacking political power to convert value delivered into recognition. Third, the formalization trap: legitimacy is offered to street markets through regulatory packages calibrated for formal retail, destroying the flexibility that these markets depend on. The framework conceptualizes contested legitimacy as power-mediated, reframing formalization as intrinsic structural incompatibility rather than any policy failure, with implications for scholarship, practice, and education.

Recommended Citation

Srinivasan, Raji and Merino, Maria C. (2026) "Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets as Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure," Subsistence Marketplaces: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/subsistencemarketplaces/vol2/iss1/1