When Alioune Thiam arrived in Barcelona, he joined hundreds of other undocumented African migrants peddling their wares illegally on the streets. Now he is part of a scheme to give some of the Spanish city’s most vulnerable people an alternative.
Senegalese-born Thiam arrived in Barcelona by airplane in 2007, joining his brother. However, he could not get a job, because he did not have a work permit.
“If you don’t have papers, you can’t work,” the 44-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
He did not choose to become an illegal street vendor, he said.
“When you arrive, you don’t have any other option. There are people that live here for five years, seven years, without papers,” he added.
For him, the hardest part is that these migrants are left in limbo while they wait, and cannot go home as they would not be allowed to re-enter Spain.
Today, Thiam, who continued selling sarongs and jewelry on the streets until he got a work permit in 2011, wants to give others the chance to stay on the right side of the law.
He is a member of Diomcoop, an initiative launched in March that enables street hawkers to undergo business training and sell merchandise at official city markets. In return, they must agree to stop trading illegally.
The project is supported by the Barcelona City Council, which has committed 800,000 euros (US$945,704) over the next three years.
Diomcoop — which draws its name from a Wolof word meaning “inner strength” — is an effort to address the problem of migrants making a living in illegal ways because they are not permitted to work, an issue common to many other cities, Diomcoop technical coordinator Ababacar Thiakh said.
Belonging to the cooperative should open up a way for members to access residency permits and regularize their legal status, Barcelona City Hall said.
The public has so far responded well to Diomcoop’s handmade clothes, jewelry and bags — some sourced from artisans’ homes in Senegal — because they offer an alternative to the goods typically sold by street traders, Thiakh said.
Those items include counterfeit designer handbags, sunglasses, sneakers and soccer jerseys bought from Chinese importers in the suburbs.
The idea is to offer something different from mass-market products, Thiakh said.
“People are selling very cool stuff in their homes, so we wanted to make the most of that,” he added.
Diomcoop is managed from a modest headquarters in the basement of a block of apartments in El Clot, a neighborhood far from the city’s tourist areas.
In this quiet, working-class district, which used to house many textile factories in Barcelona’s industrial heyday, that tradition is coming alive once again with Diomcoop’s work.
Piles of brightly colored African fabrics are strewn across tables, in contrast with the unadorned white walls of the office. There is a feeling of optimism as everyone works to prepare for the next market.
Yet, despite its early success, Thiakh said that the cooperative needs a stronger business plan to make its work more viable over the longer term.
With only 15 members, all from Senegal, it is also very small — there are an estimated 400 unlicensed traders on the streets of Barcelona.
Diomcoop plans to double its membership to 30.
There is a high level of interest, and it might move into new lines of business in future, such as offering services or food, Thiakh said.
Thiam waited four years to receive his immigration papers, an experience echoed by thousands of others.
There are nearly 19,000 undocumented African migrants living in Spain, in addition to more than 1 million documented Africans, government statistics showed.
However, unofficial estimates have said that there could be up to 50,000 undocumented African migrants in the country, more than double the registered figure.
“I don’t think the real number would be far from that,” Universidad Carlos III de Madrid professor of economics Jesus Fernandez-Huertas Moraga said.
In the past, undocumented migrants who registered with the government could access healthcare, but the law was changed in 2012, removing a powerful incentive to sign up, he added.
Even when migrants do get their papers, finding a job is not always easy.
Once legalized, Thiam said he could not find work, because jobs were so scarce during Spain’s economic crisis.
The crisis, which began nearly a decade ago, led to unemployment for millions of people, with migrants some of the worst-affected.
In the second quarter of this year, unemployment among documented and undocumented immigrants in Spain was 23 percent, 6 percent above the national average, a government population survey found. Of all continents, African immigrants had the highest unemployment rate, at 38 percent.
Unlicensed traders tend to congregate in tourist hot spots near Barcelona’s beaches, or line the streets hugging the marina, with its super yachts and private members’ clubs.
Known locally as manteros, the sellers display their goods on mantas, large blankets, with ropes tied to each end. This means they can quickly bundle everything together, sling it over one shoulder and disappear down a side street when the police arrive.
Those that are caught face fines, confiscation of their goods or detention if they cannot show identification proving they have the right to live and work in Spain. Serial offenders can be handed prison sentences of up to two years and deported.
Another group of Barcelona street traders launched an official fashion label called Top Manta earlier this year, in an attempt to move away from unlicensed selling.
These small, grassroots projects cannot solve the problem, but they could change lives in more subtle ways, experts have said.
However, they can help people “who are in a vulnerable situation, so that they can have a life of dignity,” Diomcoop president Ndeye Fatou Mbaye.
They can also show migrants “there is not only street selling, but other opportunities to make a living,” she added.
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