Research On Street Vendors’ Living Conditions With Social Network Perspective

The existence of street vendors is a very common phenomenon in the development of urbanization in contemporary China, street vendors are increasing with the increase of laid-off population in cities and the transfer of rural surplus labor force and the increase of employment population. Actually street vendor is a kind of self-employment in the domain of informal employment. For the low requirement of the entrepreneurs, street vendor has become the preferred work for social vulnerable groups. The increasing population of the group has also demonstrated the two typical features of street vendors: on the one hand, it created more jobs, released the poverty of urban cites, brought convenience to local citizens and highlighted city features; on the other hand, due to the lack of unified management, it had a negative effect on the market’s fairness and the city’s appearance, and resulted in the increasing cost of environment protection and management. The occurrence of these conflicts also raised public’s attention and made it the focus of public awareness and research.This research probes into the special group of street vendors, describes the living conditions and the behavioral features of them, and analyzes the influences on their daily lives from the perspective of social network considering the strength of social relations, the position in social network and the position in social structure as main variables. It is also aimed to dig into the supporting network in the periods of street vendors’ occupational choices, management and transformation. It is hoped that this research will be able to provide a direction for further development.By integrating theories with real cases, this research will first discuss their living conditions by interviewing Nanchang local street vendors, and then analyzes their behavioral features by analyzing the results of the survey with social network theories. It is found that the strength of social relations plays a crucial role in the periods of occupational selection, management and transformation. Moreover the position in social network and structural position are also very important, though their advantages are not obviously found in street vendor groups. It provides a direction for the development of street vendors’ social network. In addition, this research also provides some constructive advices to the government in how to administrate street vendors, and provides useful reference for more comprehensive policy orientation in the future.