25
circumstances and opportunities pursuant to common interests25. Of course, another
advantage of the mobile phone is the privacy it affords its users from the public: mobile
phones enable the secrecy of the collective. Consequently, to an outsider, the movements
and activities of members of this community can seem sudden, impulsive, nonsensical
and sometimes erratic or illogical. Let us consider two examples, the first to do with one
of the most public undocumented migrant occupations, and the second to do with housing.
It is typical to see African street vendors hawking goods one moment then
packing up and running down back alleys the next, only to set up a few blocks away or to
return to the same street again to resume selling. In some cases clusters of vendors can
be seen loitering on street comers with their wares slung over their shoulders in plastic
bags or tatty suit cases. Most striking are the circumstances when the street is devoid of
street vendors one moment then host to ten or twenty vendors the next, their displays
erected in mere seconds. These movements are to avoid municipal police patrols that
ticket and arrest unlicensed vendors and are accomplished by having a lookout or group
oflookouts patrol the surrounding area in communication with each other by mobile
phone. These latter individuals are the most difficult to identify but comprise a vital part
of the work group and get a cut of the daily profits. The lookouts have excellent
knowledge of city streets and, perhaps more importantly, the typical movements of the
municipal police (easily identifiable by their decorated black leather jackets). Moreover,
they constantly vary their avoidance strategies and hiding places. On some days that I
spent with them the vendors were instructed to cluster in a given alley, other days they
were instructed to scatter and regroup at a pre-designated safe space before redeploying.
25 It would be interesting to consider this phenomenon from the perspective of Certeau’s study of everyday
object reappropriation and mass culture individualization and production (1984).