Immigrant street vendors looking toward the homeland: Transnationalism and nonparticipation in a Los Angeles social movement

In this article, I examine a mobilization campaign in Los Angeles meant to legalize street vending and a group of street vendors, known as fruteros, who remained largely outside of it. Based on interviews with fruteros and ethnographic observation at Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign (LASVC) community meetings and political events, I explain why those with much to gain from the mobilization campaign’s success were notably absent from its development. I argue that the concept of “biographical availability,” central to scholarship on social movements and collective behavior, can be usefully expanded to include a transnational focus when seeking to understand recruitment among first-generation undocumented immigrants. A transnational focus allows us to see the cross-border civic and economic obligations that compromise fruteros’ availability in terms of time, financial resources, and energy. Potential first-generation immigrant recruits can be understood to operate in a transnational context with cross-border constraints that can preclude them from social movement participation in the local context.