The production of counter-space: Informal labour,social networks and the production of urban space in Dhaka

Abstract

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French

Access to public space for earning livelihoods is important for street vendors in global south cities. However, due to continuous population growth and the demand for lands by the real estate development sector, pressure on land is very high in the global south. Consequently, global south cities such as Dhaka provide ‘no place’ for its poor migrant citizens. Yet, the urban poor are able to appropriate public space for livelihoods. Drawing on a case study of Sattola slum in Dhaka, this article investigates how the urban poor access to public space for livelihoods and construct counter-spaces by breaking the planned order of the city. This article argues that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces with the tacit support of translocal social networks as well as with the support of a range of state and non-state powerful actors who are compromised by the benefits and profits they extract from vendors. This article draws on qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with 94 informal workers and 37 key informants. This article contributes to urban sociology literature demonstrating that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces drawing on a range of everyday tactics and appropriating public space by quietly breaking the planned order of the city.

Keywords

Counter-space informal economy kinship power production of space social capital street vendor translocal social network urban planning urban poor urban space

Introduction

Hasan (40 years), a food vendor, sells round bread (paratha), chicken shashlik, fried cow’s stomach and chicken wrap on the streets of Dhaka. He moved to Dhaka in 2013 with his wife and two children from a village in Bhola district in the very south of Bangladesh, leaving his extended family behind. Hasan established a foothold in Dhaka using family and social networks. His two brothers who had already established themselves in the city helped to set him up in the food vending business. Eventually, he was able to buy a cart. He started this business with US$297 (US$1 = 84.15 BDT), using US$119 of his own savings and borrowed the rest of the money from his brothers and kin.

Hasan lives in Sattola slum and sells snacks on the sidewalk of Banani-Mohakhali intersection, a busy commercial and residential area. He has been using this particular vending site informally since he started this business. His younger brother used to run mobile food business in the same area but moved to a different area allowing Hasan to establish there. Hasan makes US$4 to US$5 a day. He pays US$30 per month to a landlord for the rent of a makeshift house in the slum. When the new Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation took office in 2015 and embarked upon a project to remove street hawkers from public space, Hasan was forced to close his stall for some days until he could re-establish his business in the same place. Hasan is still happy with the move to Dhaka because his village offered him little or no income opportunities. In Dhaka, he can earn money, but due to lack of any formal access to space, his business constantly runs the risk of disruption. To maintain any security in these informal spaces, he needs to pay rent (protection money) to law enforcement officers, political enforcers and their representatives on a regular basis.

Hasan’s story is characteristic of rural–urban migration in Bangladesh which has been taking place for decades, accelerating in the mid-1980s with economic liberalisation and during slower periods in Bangladesh’s progress to democracy and human rights. In this state of complex inequities and powerlessness, the urban poor face numerous hurdles in seeking livelihoods. Hasan is more fortunate than some other migrants. Many of the urban poor do not have pre-existing networks to help establish them in the city. Those who do not have prior networks experience a very different set of challenges. Hasan’s story symbolises a range of everyday problems facing the urban poor in a global megacity.

Each year, 300,000 to 400,000 rural poor migrate to Dhaka in search of better livelihoods (Lata, 2021a). Most of these people end up living in slums. As the fastest growing megacities are failing to provide support for livelihoods for the urban poor, informality which refers to activities that largely remain unrecognised by ‘formal’ regimes and includes both housing and livelihood practices is important to the economies of the Southern cities (Brown, 2017; Crossa, 2014; Roy, 2009). The informal economy provides 60% to 80% of urban jobs and up to 90% of new jobs in many cities, including Dhaka (Varley, 2013). The informal sector provides the most important livelihood option for the poor. The concept ‘livelihood’ refers to ‘a means of gaining a living’ (Chambers and Conway, 1992: 5), especially focusing on informality both in terms of economic activities and the use of urban public space by slum residents.

Among other numerous barriers of informality in income earning opportunities, the urban poor experience barriers in accessing public space to conduct businesses for livelihood, including spaces around locations close to their dwellings (Lata et al., 2020) and outside their settlements (Brown, 2017). Existing research revealed that access to public space for livelihoods is very important for the urban poor in the global south (Crossa, 2014). In most cities of the global south, urban planning and governance practices have not left any space for the growing number of the urban poor while designing city’s space (Kamete, 2013; Lata et al., 2020). In addition, due to continuous population growth, which mostly originates from rural–urban migration, and the demand for lands by the real estate development sector, pressure on land is very high. Consequently, access to public space is one of the main challenges for future livelihood research in megacities (Banks, 2016). Within this context, this article pays particular attention to the opportunities and challenges of operating informal business using public space in Dhaka for livelihoods.

Drawing on the case of Sattola slum in Dhaka, I show how the urban poor rely on social capital in general and translocal social networks, in particular in accessing public space. This article contributes to the urban studies literature by demonstrating how the urban poor construct counter-spaces drawing on a range of everyday tactics and appropriating public space by quietly breaking the planned order of the city. This is done with the tacit support of translocal social networks as well as with the support of a range of state and non-state powerful actors who are compromised by the benefits and profits they extract from vendors. My analysis is informed by translocal social network and Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space and counter-space.

After presenting the conceptual discussion on translocal social network and the production of space and counter-space and describing the context and methodology of the study, I present a twofold analysis of the process through which the urban poor construct counter-spaces by breaking the planned order of Dhaka. First, I describe the translocal networks that they rely on to appropriate public space for livelihoods. Second, I present the coercive but beneficial pact that the urban poor make with local-level bureaucrats in accessing public space and producing counter-spaces in Dhaka.

Informality, social capital, translocal network and livelihoods

Conceptual discussions on ‘informality’ have gained popularity in urban studies since the introduction of neoliberal policies in the 1970s. The discussion has ranged from seeing informality as an economic category operating outside the formal sector or modern capitalist economy (Hart, 1973) to perspectives that recognise it as a continuum between the formal and informal (Yiftachel, 2009) and as a mode of transcending the domain of state regulation (Roy, 2009). Roy (2009: 80) used the term ‘urban informality’ to refer to ‘a state of deregulation, one where the ownership, use and purpose of land cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prescribed set of regulations or the law’. These kinds of informal practices led to informal urbanisation, where elite groups also encroach on land in the same way as the urban poor, yet their encroachments are ignored by the state, whereas the urban poor are labelled as ‘criminals’ for engaging in the same behaviour. In this discussion, Bayat (2000) contributes by arguing that the urban poor utilise an informal and contested governance in accessing public space such as street pavements, crossroads, urban land and spaces for assembly. Bayat (2000) refers to this spatial practice as the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’. The term ‘quiet encroachment’ refers to ‘the silent, protracted but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful to survive and improve their lives . . . marked by quiet, largely atomised and prolonged mobilisation with episodic collective action’ (Bayat, 2000: 545–546). This practice of quiet encroachment of the ordinary often leads to forms of resistance against formal rules and regulations, forming a ‘passive network’ among the people who use public space while working on the street. In this article, I employ this idea of ‘urban informality’ and ‘quiet encroachment of ordinary’ to explore how the state has created informality in terms of use of public space by poor people and how the formal and informal rules, regulations and norms are used to govern this space.

While working in the informal sector, the urban poor also heavily rely on their social networks to get by everyday life. Social capital has become an important concept in social and political sciences, human geography and economics since the 1990s and it has been applied successfully in livelihood research (Bloch and McKay, 2015). An important contribution of the social capital approach in livelihood research is that it emphasises the importance of having strong social networks and using these networks to get by everyday life. This is particularly crucial in global south cities where state hardly provides basic services to the urban poor. Consequently, the urban poor rely on their translocal social networks. The term ‘translocal network’ refers to ‘sets of multidirectional and overlapping networks, constituted through migration, in which the exchange of resources, practices and ideas links’ (Greiner, 2010: 137). Translocality is not automatically created through migration but it is formed ‘through regular communication, through the exchange of resources, and through investments in one’s local and translocal network’ (Etzold, 2016: 171).

In particular, social networks are important to the notion of translocality as ‘they conceptually link agents (near and far apart), as well as structure and agency: they form the interpersonal structures that connect individual agents, institutions, and organisations, constituting the social space within and between places’ (Sterly, 2015: 34). If a person belongs to a network, has lasting social relations and maintains close contact with members, they have ‘social capital’, so they can ask the members for a favour, advice or help (Bohle, 2005). This kind of relations among migrants, former migrants, incoming migrants and non-migrants forms ‘translocal migrant networks’, which can facilitate further migration and translocal exchanges (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013). This kind of network further establishes ‘translocal communities’ based on a common origin or place-based identities (Etzold, 2016). Translocal communities minimise risks of movement and open up an opportunity for engaging into informal economic activities (Lohnert and Steinbrink, 2005; Massey et al., 1999). The urban poor in the global south often utilise this kind of translocal networks to appropriate public spaces for livelihoods (Greiner, 2011; Lohnert and Steinbrink, 2005). In Dhaka, translocal networks are often produced through place-based identity, connections with local kin and friendship networks, who often encourage the rural poor to migrate to urban areas. Thus, I apply the translocal social capital framework to examine how the urban poor in Dhaka use their translocal social networks in accessing public space for livelihoods and produce counter-space breaking the planned structure of the city.

Place, space and counter-space: remaking cities from below

The concepts of place and space are often used interchangeably to refer to the importance of land and structures and people’s connections to them (Chen et al., 2013). However, scholars have defined places and spaces in different ways. A place has a geographical component – a unique spot in the universe (space) and material form (dimensions, structures, objects, a climate) (Gieryn, 2000). Place is often attached to history, power and meaning. In contrast, space is conceived as geometries detached from material form and cultural interpretation (Gieryn, 2000). Space is what place becomes when things, meanings and values are sucked out (Gieryn, 2000). Henri Lefebvre (1991) made an important contribution to the discussion of space incorporating the dimension of power in the production and reproduction of space. Cities are socially constructed spaces and are in constant transition due to interaction, communication and exchange between different social groups, who have different interests. In particular, different actors occupy different social positions in city. Thus, some groups are able to influence how urban space is produced and reproduced. Central in this discussion is Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of the production of space. Lefebvre develops a ‘conceptual triad’: spatial practice/perceived space, representations of space/conceived space and representational space/lived space which form a triadic relationship to produce a ‘social space’. Perceived space refers to the physical framework of a place, or the routes, networks, and concrete features that link everyday life and activities to private life and leisure. For the urban poor of Dhaka, any kind of open perceived space can be regarded as their space of livelihood.

Conceived space is tied to the relations of production and to the order that those relations impose, such as ‘to knowledge, science, to codes’ (Lefebvre, 1991). This space is created by planners, architects, geographers, bureaucrats and state actors and is used by the state as a ‘means of control, and hence of domination, of power’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 26). The idea of conceived space is particularly important when considering how planners and developers have considered or ignored the urban poor’s need for housing and livelihood spaces in Dhaka and the impact this has had on their lives and livelihoods.

The last component of Lefebvre’s conceptual triad, lived space, depicts the images of users and inhabitants rather than the designers or the processes that produce the physical space. There is a contested relationship between conceived and lived spaces as the conceived space ‘seeks to mould the space it dominates, and to reduce the obstacles and resistance it encounters there’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 49). Conceived space has a dominating nature, planned in abstract conceptualisations by technocrats and urban planners, often ignoring the meaning and practices attached to place by users.

Conceived space represents the ideals of elite social groups and is produced as ‘homogeneous, instrumental, and ahistorical in order to facilitate the exercise of state power and the free flow of capital’ (McCann, 1999: 164). The following question then arises: ‘Whose interests it [conceived space] serves when [the plan] becomes operational?’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 413). As Lefebvre (1991) notes, the capitalist mode of production prioritises the production of abstract space and ignores the use value of space over the exchange value. Abstract space also denies the presence of differential space and social space is often used by heterogeneous social groups. Consequently, contestations emerge due to hegemonic nature of conceived space as it excludes some groups’ spatial needs. I use this understanding of the contested nature of the conceived space to explore how the urban poor access public space – a form of conceived space designed by planners, architects and state officials.

Lefebvre’s unitary theory of social space is useful to explore how the hegemonic group constructs space and how ordinary residents use it. Several scholars have criticised Lefebvre’s theory of space for being vague and not giving enough direction for the actual production and reproduction of space in any society (Unwin, 2000). His theory has not clearly explained the connections between various components of space and their interaction. Yet, his theory is still useful to explore the contestation over the processes of the production of space and counter-space. Lefebvre’s theory of space also calls for an exploration of the dominant mode of the production of space and how it is used to exercise power over populations and marginalise and eliminate anyone who does not fit in its normative order. Lefebvre (1991) discusses the possibility of the production of a counter-space by marginalised groups or people ‘from below’. Counter-space can be produced by challenging hegemonic power and by reappropriating conceived space, going beyond the purpose for which it was conceived. This reappropriation may challenge the hegemonic group and restructure power relations in urban space which might ‘shift the control from hegemonic power to the city’s inhabitants’ (Véron, 2016: 1447). In this way, the marginalised group or people ‘from below’ can transgress the planned and hegemonic order of the city and can produce and reproduce counter-spaces. As Lefebvre (1991) notes, although the state and its bureaucratic and political apparatuses dominate and control the production and regulation of space, the grassroots might loosen the grip of state power occasionally by breaking the state’s order. To produce and reproduce counter-spaces, the grassroots ‘must therefore also confront the state in its role as organiser of space’ as the state controls the urbanisation process and ‘the construction of buildings and spatial planning in general’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 383).

Lefebvre’s idea of the production and reproduction of counter-spaces indicates the call for reform or revolution against the neoliberal and state-dominated production of space. In this article, I adopt Lefebvre’s idea of ‘counter-space’ to explore how the urban poor in Dhaka are able to produce a counter-space breaking the boundaries of the planned space.

The study

The data for this study were collected from Sattola slum in Dhaka (Figure 1). Dhaka is the second fastest growing megacity in the world. However, Dhaka’s planning structure has not changed much since 1971. Over the last few decades, urban development in Dhaka has been characterised by partial successes and failures of the city government’s plans (Kalam, 2009). Following the colonial planning paradigm, Dhaka’s public space is still imagined to be green and clean space, where street vendors are perceived as nuisance. Since the early 19th century, street vendors have been an essential part of urban landscapes in the Indian subcontinent; however, the British colonial government viewed it as nuisance to be driven out (Anjaria, 2010). Nineteenth-century diaries of daily life in Indian cities noted ‘diversity of cries from those who hawk about their goods and wares in streets and roadway’ (Ali, 1823: 11) of native towns like Mumbai and Dhaka. Following the British colonial legacy, the post-colonial Pakistan and Bangladesh governments have perceived street vending primarily as a problem, which has resulted in hawkers’ persistent condition of legal insecurity. Another factor that has constrained the urban poor’s lives in cities is the ongoing perception that rural areas are the ‘legitimate’ place for the poor (Banks et al., 2011). It is thus unsurprising that successive urban development plans have disregarded the urban poor in the design and planning of Bangladesh’s cities (Banks et al., 2011). In Dhaka, it is almost impossible for street vendors to obtain a licence from the municipal authority though Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) Ordinance 1983 stipulates the process to get a licence. According to the DCC Ordinance 1983 (Ministry of Law Bangladesh, 1983), Clause 115 [1], no one is allowed to ‘make an encroachment, movable or immovable, on, over, or under a street or a drain, or any land, or house-gully or building or park except under a license granted by the Corporation and to the extent permitted by the licence’. In reality, Dhaka North and South City Corporations do not provide vending licence to street vendors.

Figure 1.

Sattola in Dhaka.

Nearly 300,000 street vendors use public spaces to operate businesses in Dhaka (Lata, 2021a). I selected Sattola slum as a case study as most residents were engaged in some form of informal economic activities using public space. Sattola slum is one of the largest slums in Dhaka that is established on public space. This slum is located in the middle of Mohakhali, Niketon and Gulshan in Dhaka. There are 12,893 households in Sattola (BRAC, 2016). The residents of Sattola slum were mostly rural migrants. Some of them had been living in Sattola for more than 15 years. Most migrants of Sattola migrated from Barisal, Potuakhali and Bhola districts as people from these areas often lose their land and houses due to riverbank erosion. Besides this, kinship and social networks also worked as pull factors for many migrants. Many of them migrated to Dhaka in search of better livelihoods following their relatives and neighbours’ footsteps. Although the rural migrants moved to Dhaka for earning an income, they maintained a strong bond with their place of origin. Most of the residents of Sattola slum were engaged in informal, small-scale businesses; however, their business locations differed.

I collected data between November 2015 and February 2016, using a combination of qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, key informant interviews and observation. Data were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 94 informal workers (18 women and 76 men) and 37 key informants (for detailed information on methods and researcher’s positionality, see Lata, 2021b). There are still far fewer women than men operating vending businesses using public space, hence the gender imbalance in the sample (for detailed discussion on gendered space, see Lata et al., 2020). Interviews lasted from 30 to 90 minutes. I also spent a significant amount of time observing everyday life of traders both within and beyond Sattola slum. In terms of positionality, I found that my class position helped me to build trust with my participants and local community. As teachers are respected and trusted by most people in Bangladesh, I used to introduce myself in my role as a university teacher in Bangladesh, who was interested in knowing about poor people’s lives and livelihoods and what kinds of problems they were facing while operating informal businesses every day. In addition, as a female researcher, I enjoyed easy access to women participants, who also shared many private stories that were not part of my research. Men were equally cooperative and enthusiastic to share their experience with me (for further information, see Lata, 2021b).

All voice interviews were transcribed and translated into English from Bangla. Later, all data were stored, managed and analysed with the aid of NVivo. The study received ethical clearance from the University of Queensland. All identifying information about individual participants has been anonymised.

Claiming a space through translocal networks in Dhaka

Kinship networks are the most important sources of power for appropriating space and earning income for the urban poor in Dhaka. Following Johnson (2000: 625), kin networks can be defined as ‘extended family’, including those who are connected by ‘blood, marriage or self-ascribed association’ beyond the ‘marital dyad, the nuclear family of parents and dependent children or one parent households’. The structure of a kin network depends on the number of members, social ties, the frequency of contact between members, the directness of interaction, household composition and other indicators of physical proximity (Johnson, 2000). This practice is to some extent different from welfare states in the Global North, which often provide safety nets for the marginalised groups (Pierson, 2001). However, Southern states do not provide the urban poor with many employment opportunities or other public services. Most poor households do not earn sufficient income to meet their own needs, nor do they have access to the formal market economy due to a lack of economic capital. Hence, they create and maintain supportive relationships within their community to ‘dilute economic insecurity’ (McGee, 1974) which shows the importance of kinship ties among the urban poor.

In Dhaka, poor people rely on their kin networks for operating businesses and finding vending spots. Although the formal economic sector in Dhaka is operated by the principles of the neoliberal economy, the informal economic practices are still embedded in social relationships such as kinship. Polanyi (1968) refers to this kind of economic practices as ‘embeddedness’ of economic activities. My findings show that most of the residents in Sattola heavily relied on their social network to make the decision to move to Dhaka in the first place. Then, they rent a room near their relatives or fictive kin’s¹ place. Later, they utilised their translocal migrant networks to settle in Dhaka. Hence, translocal migrant networks play an important role in the success of a new migrant settling in Dhaka as reflected in Hasan’s story in the introduction section. Apart from settling in, the urban poor mostly depended on their translocal networks to appropriate public space for earning an income as Miraj said:

I have been living in Dhaka for five years. My relatives live here. I did not like my village as there were not many employment opportunities. So I talked to my relatives first and then decided to come to Dhaka. My uncle’s son and aunt’s son live here . . . The month I came to Dhaka, I did not rent a room. I used to live with my cousins. I rented a room the following month . . . At first I started my business at Mohakhali. I used other people’s vending site at the beginning. If someone decided not to go for vending on a particular day, I used to sell in their place. Sometimes they also offer me their vending sites, as I was new in this business. They did this favour saying, ‘I am not going today, you may go. You are new (in this business), so you go’. (Miraj, 28, a male food vendor)

Miraj’s narratives further illustrate how informal ownership of a vending site is negotiated in Dhaka. Sometimes vendors also lost their ownerships if a powerful local leader decides to rent that space to another vendor at a higher rent. However, the residents of Sattola usually used their social networks to avoid disputes regarding their livelihood spaces. They maintained good relationships with fellow traders even if they are not kin. For example, three hawkers sold a popular snack of puffed rice and chickpeas near the Infectious Disease Hospital. Sohul (aged 35, male), one of the three hawkers, denied that there was any competition or verbal conflict among them: ‘No . . . I have good relationships with everybody. They come to me and I go to them . . . we are good. We don’t have any misunderstanding with anybody’.

In addition to appropriating space utilising translocal migrant networks and maintaining good relationships, the urban poor also received start-up business capital from their translocal networks (Table 1). As Table 1 shows, most participants borrowed money from their translocal networks, including kin and fictive kin networks, as banks and other government financial institutions do not provide them loans due to lack of collateral. Apart from kin networks, they mostly borrowed money from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the help of their wives as local development NGOs such as BRAC and Grameen Bank often lend money (popularly known as micro-credit) to poor women along with providing free health and education services for the poor. The poor households in Madras also utilised a variety of kinship and social networks to obtain necessary resources to fulfil the household’s basic needs (Noponen, 1991).

Table 1.

Business capital for vending activities, sources of capital and profit.

Type of vending activity	Business capital (US$) (US$1 = 84.15 BDT)	Sources of business capital	Profit per day (US$)
Processed food (food vendors who sell food in pushcarts)	143–238	Brother/brother-in-law/other relatives/kin groups, village cooperatives and sometimes from NGOs	5–7
Hawking (Hawkers, who sell food carrying baskets or bags)	12	Own savings	2
Tea stall	297	Borrowed from BRAC (US$119)	2
Rice cakes	4–119	Kin, NGOs, own savings	7–8
Fruit	95–119	Own savings Loan from NGOs	4–6
Boiled eggs	14	Own savings	1–2
Vegetables and spices	18	Borrowed from neighbours/fictive kin	2
Basket	119	Own savings	36–59

Source: Author’s own work.

The urban poor learnt business mechanisms through their translocal networks working as an apprentice for the first few months once they arrived in Dhaka. Later, they began their own business; however, they often run similar business that their kin and friends operate and make a business network of their own. Most food vendors in Sattola sold processed food. Most street food vendors sold ‘bot’ (fried cow stomach/FCS), which was prepared using cow’s stomach, vegetables and spices (Figure 2). They also sold parata (flat round bread) and FCS. Some food vendors sold chicken shashlik along with FCS and parata. Most food vendors learnt this business from Ahmed Bepari, a local food vendor of Sattola, who used to operate this business before his death. He was the pioneer of this business and introduced the business to the residents of Sattola. This group of street vendors claimed that everyone who was engaged in this business in Dhaka originated from Bhola, Barisal. Due to river erosion and lack of employment, many rural poor of Bhola migrated to Dhaka and used their translocal networks to enter into the business. In this way, the rural migrants of Bhola created a translocal community based on a common origin.

Figure 2.

A vendor preparing fried cow stomach (locally known as bot chop).

This community had further established an informal business network. This informal network helped them to make a monthly contract with chicken and oil suppliers, who provided them chicken and oil every morning. Thus, they travelled less to buy food-processing materials unlike the other food vendors. Kallol explained what they bought every day for their business:

A supplier comes to [Sattola to] supply chicken to everyone, whoever is engaged in this business. Today I bought 4 kilos [kilograms] chicken. I bought 20 kilos of cow’s stomach at 14 USD from wireless gate. I always buy cow’s stomach from him. I also bought 2 kilos of papaya (.71 USD), 3 kilos of cucumber (.36 USD) and spices of 2 USD from Sattola market. (Kallol, 28, a male food vendor)

Apart from learning how to operate business, the urban poor also first came to know from their translocal networks that they had to pay a certain amount of money to linemen if they wanted to buy temporary security over their vending spaces. A lineman is a middleman who collects security money from vendors and distributes it to other dominant groups such as police, local police station, mastans (local enforcers) and political leaders (Lata et al., 2019). The next section discusses how they use their social networks to initially appropriate space and negotiate with lineman.

Cooptation with local-level bureaucrats and informal power brokers in claiming space

As noted above, the urban poor cannot legally appropriate public space for operating businesses in Dhaka. One of the strategies they employed to access space is quietly appropriating space with the assistance of their translocal social networks. Apart from quietly appropriating space, many participants said that they established good connections with local shopkeepers and local powerbrokers and use these networks in accessing public space. Existing research on street vending in the different parts of the global south reveals that street traders operate their businesses with the help of politicians (Etzold, 2013). Similar practices can be found between street vendors and local politicians in Sattola. Manik (aged 48), a member of the ward councillor’s committee, said that committee members were aware of the money being collected from the vegetable sellers on the corner of the main road in Sattola and that shopkeepers were forbidden from demanding money from small traders.

The ordinary residents of Sattola also described how their social spheres are dominated by local political leaders and their followers. Interview participants described Nasir, the ward councillor of Sattola, as helpful and kind to the poor, possibly because he was also raised in a poor family. However, Nasir’s followers often dictated the use of Sattola’s public and parochial realms. For example, Tania (female) used to operate a semi-permanent tailoring shop on the footpath adjacent to the Awami League (ruling political party) office. However, Nasir’s followers ordered her and some other semi-permanent shopkeepers to move their businesses away from the footpath in 2015, saying, ‘It looks bad if they run shops in front of the local party office’. They told Tania and the other shopkeepers to find other open spaces within Sattola. Tania selected a place near the party office and asked Manik to give her that space. However, Manik allocated the space to another shopkeeper, Ujjol (male), who had already set up a tea stall nearby. Tania believed that Ujjol offered Manik a bribe.

Interview participants also informed that sometimes they could negotiate successfully with local shopkeepers to use open space in front of their shops when they operated businesses outside Sattola. Nahin (aged 45, male), a food vendor, said he negotiated with a local shopkeeper at Mohakhali after appealing to his sympathy, disclosing the details of his vulnerable and poverty-ridden life and seek his permission to sit in front of a corner of his shop. Using this strategy, street vendors are sometimes also able to avoid paying protection money to linemen as the shop owner tells the linemen or police that that individual is running their business. Salehin (aged 46, male), the owner of a grocery shop near Mohakhali, allowed a banana seller to operate his business sitting in front of his shop. He said,

That space [where the banana seller sits with his basket] was open. So, he sits over there. As he is poor, I did not tell him anything . . . Sometimes police come and ask us about these people. We tell them they are our people.

Not all shopkeepers are as empathetic as Salehin. Most shopkeepers demand some amount of money from street traders in exchange for allowing them to trade in front of their shops. For example, a fruit vendor informed me that he is not permitted to stand in front of any grocery shop near Wireless Gate. Those shopkeepers demanded US$1 to US$2 if traders wanted to set up their pushcarts in front of their shops and operate businesses there. Since they were unable to be in one place for long, they frequently moved from one place to another.

In addition to establishing social network with local shopkeepers, the urban poor often had to negotiate with three groups of formal and informal powerbrokers to access public space for livelihoods. The most influential group was the police and the officials of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC); however, the officials of DNCC usually made decisions regarding the eviction of illegal structures. Hence, vendors had less scope for negotiation with this group. Vendors were usually forced to negotiate with public officials through local politicians, mastans, linemen and police, despite the fact these people were often the face of exploitation. These public officials, especially police, often ‘played with the rules’ to earn an extra income; however, police usually did not collect money from street traders. In most cases, a middleman who is known as lineman collects money from vendors and later it is distributed among police, police station and local political leaders (Lata, 2021a). This is how state actors extort informal workers using their institutional power illegally. This practice is reflected in Sakib’s account:

My brother pays 3.57 USD [he explains it as rent for space] for doing business in Banani [an affluent neighbourhood in Dhaka]. He pays 0.24 USD to a lineman for the Police, 1USD to a local AL leader and 0.48 and 0.59 USD to two other leaders. They are local leaders. That is why we have to pay them whether we like it or not. Otherwise they will not allow us to run our business there. Police do not help us in this regard. (Sakib, 16, a male food vendor)

Despite the regular informal payment, police sometimes evicted vendors due to the change of an Officer-in-Charge (OC) of a local police station or to follow orders of a senior police officer:

The senior police officers forced them to evict us . . . Not everybody gave money. The new traders often argue with the police that they won’t move from the place.

So police don’t collect money directly?

No. If police collected money from us directly that would be good. They have mediators [linemen] for that. They get a share from the collected money . . . There are duty cars of the police, who drive around the road at night. They take money. They collect 0.24 USD from us. There are also police from the camp . . . There are also civilian police. If we don’t give them money, they will come again wearing civilian dress and take money from you. The big terrorists of Dhaka city are police. They arrest innocent people and pick them up in their car and if the victim pays them 2 USD, they release him. (Sohel, 35, a male food vendor).

Participants further mentioned that although police sometimes evicted their shops, they usually received information from the linemen that police would evict shops in their vending areas as police often informed the linemen about the eviction decision. Consequently, many vendors could save their vending carts. However, some participants like Jalal (aged 50, male) said that they were too poor to stay home. So, he lost his pushcart once during vendor eviction programme run by police.

Street traders repeatedly blamed police for their misery and loss during eviction drives; however, there are some structural factors related to this practice in Bangladesh. For example, a lower ranking police constable only receives a monthly salary of US$59 without any bribe, which is significantly less than US$101 that is earned by the food vendors on an average (Etzold, 2015). However, police’s role is important in the livelihood practices of street vendors in the sense that at least they provide temporary security over livelihood spaces in return of money and food. Police often inform linemen prior to an eviction drive so that linemen can tell vendors to clear the footpaths and other spaces that are used for vending activities. Sometimes police also order street vendors to move their vending equipment away prior to demolishing their shops. Similar practices are also evident in Anjaria’s (2010, 2011) study on street traders in Mumbai and Etzold’s (2013) study in Dhaka.

Apart from collecting protection money, sometimes police arrest street traders if they do not move their vending equipment following police’s order as mentioned by Salman (aged 27, male), a basket vendor. Salman and Fahim (male) shared their experiences of being arrested by police during evictions in Gulshan and Mohakhali. Salman used his political connections to get a bail. On the contrary, Fahim paid a fine to bail out from prison as he did not have political connections like Salman. Salman’s and Fahim’s case indicate the ‘dark side of social capital’ (Putzel, 1997). As Bohle (2005) argues that social networks can be unsocial in a sense that a social network can sometimes exclude its members and often exclude actively its non-members. As Salman joined the ruling political party and attended party meetings, he was able to use his political networks to get a bail. Local political leaders in Dhaka often help their followers to secure their votes during local and national government elections. On the contrary, Fahim did not develop any political connection as he was totally dependent on Salman. He migrated to Dhaka to work with Salman. These narratives further illustrate how police collect money forcefully from vendors, destroy shops, confiscate vending equipment, beat and arrest them if they do not listen to them, which is consistent with previous studies in different cities of the South (Brown, 2017). The DNCC officials and the police in Dhaka drive this kind of eviction in the name of beautification of the city as well as demolishing illegal structures from the streets to ensure better traffic and movements of the pedestrians. The state controls access to public space using these strategies. However, the findings of my study suggested that the state has failed to control poor people’s access to public space and maintain the planned order of the city as the vendors keep reappropriating their vending spots after every eviction by establishing an unholy alliance with state and non-state power brokers.

Discussion and conclusion

This article argues that the urban poor are able to break the planned order of the city, which Lefebvre termed as conceived space, and produce a ‘counter-space’, by using a range of strategies such as quiet appropriation of land utilising translocal migrant networks, using spatial mobility and making informal, mutually beneficial pacts with a range of local state and non-state actors working outside of their formal roles. The urban poor rely heavily on their kin and fictive kin and use their translocal networks in appropriating and reappropriating public space for livelihoods. It should be noted that the urban poor of Dhaka do not only rely on their kinship networks; rather, similar practices are evident in other parts of the global south, where strong social networks and kinship play an important role in the livelihood practices of the urban poor (McFarlane, 2011). Although this practice is to some extent different from welfare states in the Global North, who often provide safety nets for the marginalised groups (Pierson, 2001), this is an important network for the urban poor in the South as Southern states do not provide much employment opportunities or other public services for the urban poor (Anjaria, 2011). Thus, the findings contribute to the sociological literature on mobility and social network as well as demonstrate the importance of adopting a translocal view in researching the livelihoods of the urban poor which can enhance our understanding on the complex rural–urban connections that comprise an important element of livelihood strategies for migrant households.

In addition, the findings reveal that street vendors quickly learn about the mandatory security payment system and rules of the street from their kin and social networks and use these methods to appropriate available public space. Bayat (1997) has described such practices as ‘street politics’. By learning these rules of the street and entering into an informal pact with powerful state and non-state actors, vendors break the planned, legal order of the city to produce a ‘counter-space’ (Lefebvre, 1991) which they use for their livelihood. Counter-spaces are produced by a marginalised group in opposition to the conceived spaces constructed by the state apparatus. As Lefebvre (1991: 23) notes, ‘the rationality of the state, of its techniques, plans and programs, provokes opposition’. As the vendors of Sattola are not sufficiently organised or motivated to confront the state directly and claim their right to appropriate space (Lata et al., 2019), they construct counter-spaces through everyday tactics such as appropriating space quietly and with high mobility.

This article makes a significant contribution to the literature on urban sociology in general and the production of space and counter-space in particular, revealing how the poor, using meagre resources, defend themselves against the state’s hegemonic production of space to produce a ‘counter-space’, transgressing state-constructed conceived space by using a range of strategies such as quiet appropriation of land utilising translocal migrant networks, using spatial mobility and making informal, mutually beneficial pacts with a range of local state and non-state actors working outside of their formal roles. Mastans, linemen, police and local politicians all have a stake in the continued operation of street vending and do their best to ensure that vendors continue to operate, despite pressure from above and the necessity to act on regular campaigns to clear the streets of informal traders. The localised nature of these informal economic relations means that they are unavoidably socially embedded, working at a spatial and social level where day-to-day contact is inevitable and therefore subject to the norms of behaviour that regular local contact demands (Lata et al., 2019). Despite this mutually beneficial arrangement, a substantial power imbalance still exists. However, street vendors have very limited power to resist the demands of the state or local representatives of the state acting informally. Presenting this case using a critical lens has enabled me to go beyond the production of the planned and conceived spaces of a city that has preoccupied much of the existing literature (Nkooe, 2014; Véron, 2017). Moreover, this article has provided a concrete account of the grassroots’ production of a counter-space outside of the planned order of the city.

The processes of the production and reproduction of counter-spaces presented in this article have ramifications beyond the specific case of Dhaka or the South Asian urban context. While this case relies on specific urban experiences of one marginalised group and their production of a counter-space, the process described in this article is relevant to other cities where the hegemonic power of the state cannot be challenged through the usual channels of civil society or a free media. Where these conditions prevail, conceived spaces are produced to create homogeneous space, often forcefully erasing other narratives and ignoring marginalised groups’ right to the city (Lefebvre, 1991). To explore how marginalised groups access public space, how they negotiate in access and what are the negotiation processes that allow them to produce a counter-space provide important clues about how this might be achieved in other cities with a similar socio-political environment. While there might be many other possible routes used by marginalised groups claim their right to the city and produce counter-spaces, this article provides a template for future investigations in other informal urban contexts.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the interviewees who shared their experiences, views and time. I also thank the journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

ORCID iD

Lutfun Nahar Lata

Notes

Author biography

Lutfun Nahar Lata is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Social Solutions research group within the University of Queensland (UQ) Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR). As part of her PhD and post-PhD research, she has developed an impactful programme of research into the key social policy topics of precarious work, migration, poverty governance, urban marginality, housing and place-based disadvantage. Her research has been published in journals such as The Sociological Review; Cities; Gender, Work & Organization; Housing Policy Debate; Geographical Research; Qualitative Research Journal; Journal of Contemporary Asia and Government Information Quarterly.

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