CENTRE for LATIN AMERICAN
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION

The edge of the law: Street vendors and the erosion of citizenship in São

SPEAKER:  Jacinto Cuvi, Université libre de Bruxelles
DISCUSSANT: Kees Koonings, CEDLA-UvA
DATE: 18 September 2026
TIME: 15:30-17:00
​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE:  VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

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Paulo As in many other cities in Latin America, street vendors form a significant share of the workforce in São Paulo. But their ubiquity masks perpetual struggle. Some have the right to practice their trade; others do not. All of them strive to make it—or stay afloat. Jacinto Cuvi introduces us to the world of street vendors and teases out the relationship between the making of legality and the experience of citizenship. As São Paulo’s city government undertakes a large-scale eviction campaign, this lecture reveals how the lines can be redrawn between work that is legal and work that takes place running from the police. Alongside the mechanics of disenfranchisement, the presentation captures the lived experience of criminalization among vendors who continually reinvent strategies to eke out a living as informal citizens at the edge of the law.

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Picture information
Author: Darwin Boaventura / Unsplash
Location: Av. Paulista, Bela Vista, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Licence: Free to use under the Unsplash License

South-South migration, urban informality and transnational care: The migrant body and an embodied research approach    

SPEAKER:  Tanja Bastia, University of Manchester
DISCUSSANT: Paolo Boccagni, University of Trento
DATE: 11 November 2026
TIME: 15:30-17:00
​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE:  VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

​Tanja Bastia's lecture brings migration studies and urban informality into dialogue by showing how each has overlooked dimensions central to understanding contemporary urban life. It argues that migration research has often been constrained by methodological nationalism, while studies of urban informality have tended to treat migrants primarily as neighbours, overlooking how legal status, transnational ties, cultural practices, and mobility shape urban experiences. Drawing on recent research on transnational care, the lecture explores how migration reconfigures care for ageing parents across and beyond urban, rural, and peri-urban spaces. Finally, it proposes the migrant body as a unifying analytical lens to bridge disciplinary divides and illuminate the intersections of migration, care, embodiment, and urban transformation.    

Multispecies technical democracy: Earth observation and the rights of nature in Ecuador

SPEAKER:  Jorge Núñez Vega, UvA
DISCUSSANT: Karolien van Teijlingen, Radboud University
DATE: 4 December 2026
TIME: 15:30-17:00
​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE:  VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

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Since the 1970s, states and corporations have produced satellite images to map, manage, and exploit the environment. Earth observation, as this practice is called, has mostly been deployed in resource extraction, scanning the planet for minerals, petroleum, and natural gas. But in recent decades, this technology has been taken up by new hands for environmental justice and ecological reconstruction. In this talk, Jorge Núñez Vega analyzes the formation of a research collective concerned with the defense of the rights of nature in Ecuador, amid a government-declared internal armed conflict. The Earth Imagination Network brings together communities affected by contamination, remote sensing experts, environmental lawyers, and multimodal artists. Through collaborative satellite visualizations, this collective explores who can speak for nature in the realms of politics, economics, and ethics. Ultimatelly, what is at stake is the possibility of seeing Earth not only as a damaged environment in need of protection, but also as a living ecology with democratic voice.