Histories of future-makers: examining young informal vendors’ current and imagined lives and livelihoods in urban Tanzania

Although the opportunities and challenges of the informal sector have received much attention in recent decades, understanding how the characteristics of informal work intersect with and shape youths’ imagined futures remains understudied. Addressing this gap is crucial, given region-specific increases in the number of youth entering the urban informal sector, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa. This paper focuses on in-depth ethnographic research undertaken in Arusha and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with 22 young informal vendors aged 15–35. Life-mapping interviews and participatory timeline diagrams were used to develop rich insights into participants’ past, present and imagined lives and livelihoods. It extends the concept of ‘being and becoming’, developed to examine the interwoven nature of youths’ present and future lives, by analysing how young vendors navigate the intersection of their past experiences, present realities, and future possibilities through informal work in urban spaces. The article highlights the complex temporality of youths’ informal livelihoods by exploring their goals and ambitions, income generating activities, experiences of customer-related challenges, and perspectives on self-employment. Through this, it argues that youths’ histories shape their futures as much as the unfolding of their lives in the present. It also positions young vendors as future-makers who actively construct their futures through informal work. In the context of growing socio-economic uncertainty, this paper provides a timely contribution to geographical perspectives on youth by examining how young vendors navigate, sustain, adapt, and reimagine their lives and livelihoods within increasingly uncertain urban contexts marked by high levels of informality.