Transgressive Globalization in Los Angeles’ Informal Economies

• In Event: Borderless Narratives: Resisting Empire Through Memory, Movement, and Marginalized Spaces

Abstract

This paper explores how migrant entrepreneurs in Los Angeles built businesses that defied the neoliberal economic policies that consigned them to precarious positions in the labor market. Focusing specifically on the swap meet industry, I examine how predominantly Latinx vendors from the 1980s to the early 2000s negotiated with East Asian wholesale suppliers to create trans-Pacific supply networks, capitalizing on the era’s free-trade policies. Whether clothing and apparel, electronics, furniture, or health and beauty products, these networks allowed migrants to carve out livelihoods, and a sense of belonging, despite the constraints enforced by neoliberal reforms. I introduce the concept of “transgressive globalization” to describe how migrants, often fleeing the social and economic inequalities imposed by neoliberalism, have crafted businesses and communities in Los Angeles that subvert the structures that have limited their economic mobility in the United States.

Author

• Julia Brown-Bernstein, Yale