How do hawker vendors achieve upward social mobility despite low educational status?

• Main Authors: Cheang, Joanne Zu Er, Khoe, Wei Jun, Lim, Yu Cheng
• Other Authors: Jung Jong Hyun
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78713
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This research seeks to elucidate how hawkers achieve upward social mobility. To do so, 12 hawker owners or co-owners were obtained via purposive sampling and interviewed. The results showed that hawkers need to embody cultural capital that includes grit, skill and knowledge, language to communicate with different customers, as well as embody sacrifice, multiple roles, experience and passion. Hawkers also have to deal with precarity in their job including the rising cost of food and rents, as well as finding a good location for their business. This research underscores some of the factors that differentiate hawker vendors who achieve upward social mobility from those who do not. This research has also challenged Marx’s conception of labour as hawkers embody both the roles of capitalists and workers, as well as the dualistic classification of work as formal and informal.