Kids at Work

Emir Estrada

Published by New York University Press 2019

Kids at Work

Latinx Families Selling Food on the Streets of Los Angeles

Emir Estrada

Volume 7 in the series Latina/o Sociology

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479811519.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

How Latinx kids and their undocumented parents struggle in the informal street food economy

Street food markets have become wildly popular in Los Angeles—and behind the scenes, Latinx children have been instrumental in making these small informal businesses grow. In Kids at Work, Emir Estrada shines a light on the surprising labor of these young workers, providing the first ethnography on the participation of Latinx children in street vending.

Drawing on dozens of interviews with children and their undocumented parents, as well as three years spent on the streets shadowing families at work, Estrada brings attention to the unique set of hardships Latinx youth experience in this occupation. She also highlights how these hardships can serve to cement family bonds, develop empathy towards parents, encourage hard work, and support children—and their parents—in their efforts to make a living together in the United States. Kids at Work provides a compassionate, up-close portrait of Latinx children, detailing the complexities and nuances of family relations when children help generate income for the household as they peddle the streets of LA alongside their immigrant parents.

Author information

Estrada Emir :

Emir Estrada is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University.

Reviews

Ruben Hernandez-Leon,author of Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States:
Kids at Work sheds new light on the role that children and youth play in family survival strategies in the urban commons of one of the most important immigrant metropolis of our era. This book brilliantly shows the agency of these young women and men who actively contribute to the well-being of their families. Emir Estrada has made a unique contribution to the sociology of children of immigrants, studying their lives as they work alongside their parents on the streets of Los Angeles.

Cecilia Menjívar,co-author of Immigrant Families:
This original, thoughtful, engaging ethnography vividly captures the texture of everyday life among immigrant children and children of immigrants who work selling food in the streets of Los Angeles. In the childrens own voices, we learn about their economic contributions, their lives, and aspirations, but also from them about immigrant entrepreneurship, the complex dynamics in immigrant families, and childhood in general. Kids at Work resists facile explanations and makes an enduring contribution to the immigration scholarship. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in immigrant families.

Leisy J. Abrego,author of Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders:
Estrada balances methodological rigor with great empathylikely partially rooted in her own experiences as a teen vendorto develop a deeply insightful and nuanced analysis of the lives of immigrant children street vendors in Los Angeles. Written clearly and accessibly, the book reveals the structural context in which vending becomes necessary, while underscoring the childrens agency that allows them to find meaning in the work they do to help support their families and their own aspirations. Kids at Work will make readers not only notice, but also appreciate youth whose public labor challenges social notions of childhood in powerfully gendered and racialized ways.

Zulema Valdez,author of Entrepreneurs and the Search for the American Dream:
Emir Estradas insightful ethnography reveals the complexity of the household economy of undocumented and mixed-status families in Los Angeles, from the standpoint of children who work as street vendors. Kids at Work forces a reconsideration of traditional notions of childhood, family relations, and work, by demonstrating how children with their own agency and decision-making capacity enter into mutually supportive and protective family and work arrangements with their parents to make ends meet. In the context of a highly-stratified economy and society, where race, illegality, class, and gender intersect to shape unequal life chances, Estradas ground-breaking book uncovers the central and indispensable role that children play as co-contributors to the household economy of our most vulnerable families.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Working with la Familia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. “If I Don’t Help Them, Who Will?”: The Working Life Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. Street Vending in Los Angeles: A Cultural Economic Innovation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3. Working Side by Side: Intergenerational Family Dynamics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
4. Making a Living Together: Communal Family Obligation Code and Economic Empathy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
5. “I Get Mad and I Tell Them, ‘Guys Could Clean, Too!’ ” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
6. Street Violence: “I Don’t Put Up a Fight Anymore” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
7. “My Parents Want Me to Be Something in Life, Like a Lawyer or a Hero” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Conclusion: “So, Are You Saying Children Should Work?” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207