Grassroots intermediaries in urban informal trading: Brokering for development or stifling dissent?

In many global South cities, informal hawkers occupy public spaces to earn a living. They often face eviction, resulting in uncertain income and insecure access to workplaces. Inevitably, many vendors nurture a clientelist link with political brokers to cope with their precarious street life. In some cases, vendor groups engage with state agencies to resist eviction and push for social inclusionary policies. While the informal vending literature has examined the strategies and outcomes of various state-vendor relationships, there has been scant scholarly account on the role of intermediaries in the engagement channels. In this paper, I ask: How do grassroots intermediaries facilitate and sustain engagement channels between street vendors and state actors? What role/s do they play in the engagement practices? I draw on the experience of Baclaran hawkers to demonstrate how grassroots intermediaries perform four functions: a) conduit to power structures; b) instrument of control; c) facilitator of social dialogues; d) channel for policy advocacy. I argue that these critical roles reinforce grassroots democratic entanglements where collective action practices contain progressive and regressive democratic elements as well as conflicting motives or routines in a context of acute inequality and informality