The sun shines for everyone: popular entrepreneurship as a peripheral identity

Abstract

The article analyzes the possibility of consolidating popular entrepreneurship as a significant identity in São Paulo. The text is an outcome of an ethnography conducted between 2017 and 2022. Two profiles of self-employed workers are analyzed: a case of “weak” entrepreneurship, in which the little articulated entrepreneurial ethos is linked to a family project; then, two cases of “strong” entrepreneurship, in which their characters express the lexicon characteristic of entrepreneurial discourse, but with different results depending on the aspiration for social distinction. For each of the three cases, experiences in relation to work, neighborhood, formal and non-formal education and prospects for social mobility are analyzed.

Urban peripheries; Popular culture; Entrepreneurship; Social classes; Social mobility