Informal Digital Micro-Commerce and Class Identity Construction Among Latin American Urban Informal Workers
Author: Santiago Mendez Ruiza, Lucas Andrew Hoffmanb, Jalen Colemanc
Corresponding Author : Santiago Mendez Ruiz. E-mail: santiago.mendezruiz@vermontstate.edu.us
a Department of Environmental Engineering, Vermont State Research University, 210 Academic Avenue, Burlington, 05401, United States
b Department of Applied Mathematics, Vermont State Research University, 210 Academic Avenue, Burlington, 05401, United States
c Mountain View University, 542 Hilltop Road, Boulder, 80302, United States
Journal Metadata: American International Journal of Social & Economic Research, Vol.1, Issue 1, Pages 13–22, 2026
Abstract
Social media-based informal commerce such as WhatsApp group sales has reshaped the survival mode of Latin American urban informal workers. Different from formal capital-owned e-commerce platforms, these chat-based trading channels operate outside formal tax and labor supervision frameworks. Existing Western platform labor research rarely studies unregistered street vendors relying on messaging apps. Based on informal economy theory and Bourdieu’s triple capital framework, this study uses grounded theory and 67 in-depth interviews to explore how digital business simultaneously brings income growth and solidifies workers’ marginal class identity.
Keywords: Latin American informal digital commerce; informal urban workers; class identity; grounded theory; social media conversational commerce
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© 2026 Santiago Mendez Ruiz. This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided appropriate credit to the original author and source is given.