The work of the peddler: professional trajectory and daily routine

Abstract

This article stems from the investigation into the professional paths of peddlers, with a view to identifying factors which determine them as well as finding out whether peddling comes about as a choice of employment or as a way out of unemployment. With this aim, semidirected interviews were made with 13 peddlers from the São Paulo metropolitan area who had taken to the streets after the introduction of the Real Plan. Interviews have covered the following periods in the lives of interviewees: professional path until the present, everyday work life and leisure and future prospects. The data obtained in the interviews were set up in three axes: (a) professional trajectories; (b) everyday work life; and (c) formal market and informal market. Peddlers pointed out questions of deep relevance regarding the paths trodden by Brazilian workers in search of professional placement. The difficulties in fitting into the formal market - in which an oscillating movement led them sometimes to formal, sometimes to informal work - were emphasized; they brought out the rough quotidian experience of informal occupations, the importance of education and origin for job admission, and the visions of the determinations which the distant circles of political and economical decisions impose on them.