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The Vicissitudes of Life-Making: Street-Selling, Motherhood, and the Quest for Dignity in Cabo Verde

par Marcus, Noemie
Président du jury NEWELL, Alexander AN
Promoteur Noret, Joël
Co-Promoteur Petit, Pierre
Publication Non publié, 2022-10-04

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

This dissertation follows a group of approximatively fifteen female street-sellers who vend bananas and other horticultural foodstuff around the streets of inner-city Mindelo, a city situated on the Cabo Verdean island of São Vicente. The bulk of these sellers are internal migrants: they initially came from the rural hinterlands and the flatter coastlines of either Santiago or Santo Antão, where banana cultivation enjoys a long-standing tradition. Most of my interlocutors, moreover, operate within what is commonly called the ‘informal sector’ of the economy: they hardly ever have their ventures registered at the municipality, they seldom pay license or market fees, and they are rarely affiliated to the public welfare system to enjoy social security benefits. In Cabo Verdean Crioulu, these women are called ‘Rabidantis’ – ‘re-sellers’, or women who ‘flip life around’. As mothers, they commonly raise their children with minimal financial support from the respective fathers. They peddle then, as they say, to ‘make lives’ (fazi or kria bida): to scrap livelihoods and to create more favourable conditions for their children to rise socially and existentially. In my research, I cast their selling-endeavours as ‘economic projects of life-making’ that are embedded in intergenerational configurations and that pursue aspirations of collective social advancement. Even though engulfed in overlapping uncertainties (be they financial, legal, or ecological), I argue, street-vending is not just about improvising to get by in the present moment. My interlocutors’ commercial doings in truth form long-term projects: in selling, women seek to become self-reliant, sustain their children and invest in their futures to improve the life chances of the entire family unit in the long run. These investments are further cast as beneficial for mothers themselves, for they plan their projects as collaborative ones: as they devote themselves to ‘rise’ their children up – as they say – they bind them in relations of reciprocity. And once they draw near old age, mothers then expect their past devotion to be given back in the form of financial support, care and assistance. Over five chapters, my research explores the modalities and the practicalities but also the conundrums and the vicissitudes posed to such life-making projects at different stages in a Rabidanti’s life.