Becoming legal, challenging authorities: migrant street vendors and advocacy organizations changing labor infrastructures in Los Angeles

Since 2019, the implementation of new policies allowing legal street vending in Los Angeles has created economic and legal opportunities but significant implementation challenges. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2024 in Los Angeles County, we examine how undocumented migrant street vendors engage with and reshape the process of legalization. Collaborating with advocacy organizations and state actors, these vendors promote, appropriate, and negotiate legalization, actively shaping its implementation within a multilevel governance environment. We argue that the work that this infrastructure deploys continues and takes on additional meaning during implementation.