Everyday Economies: Narratives and Negotiations of Cultural Economic Practices in Langley Park, Maryland

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on Langley Park, a tri-jurisdictional suburb of Washington, D.C., primarily inhabited by residents from Latin America, especially Guatemala and El Salvador. Due to its proximity to Washington, D.C., Langley Park is experiencing redevelopment initiatives, particularly as a future transit-oriented development site for the Purple Line light rail. This study explores how Langley Park epitomizes everyday economies, a framework that considers community and diverse, often invisible economies, along with the daily lives of informal vendors, translocal and microbusinesses, and hybrid economies. I investigate how economic survival and networking are integrated into the community's daily practices, social relations, and spatial negotiations through an ethnographic and qualitative approach that was conducted via participant observation, pláticas, semi-structured interviews, visual and material analysis, and archival analysis. In Langley Park, everyday economies have emerged as residents and entrepreneurs navigate historical forms of slow, legal violence and systemic disinvestment. As the Purple Line undergoes construction with a scheduled opening in 2027, the community faces renewed risks of displacement and dispossession. My argument is two-fold: First, I propose that slow, legal violence is a form of displacement experienced by Central American immigrants who have faced ongoing marginalization, forced migration, and dispossession, making them vulnerable to future transit-oriented displacement and at odds with top-down stakeholder visions. Despite these challenges, they have developed cultural and economic practices that reclaim space and support everyday economies. Second, through ethnographic conversations, I contend that economic life is shaped not only by capitalist structures and state policies but is also actively produced through daily acts of care, reciprocity, and resistance. Vendors create translocal marketplaces that blend cultural memory and social media-driven entrepreneurship by preserving and documenting their lived experiences across space and time on digital platforms. While these networks contribute to place and community identity within local, transnational, and translocal economies, they are often excluded from official government discourse and planning projects. This research enhances our understanding of why these networks are crucial for Latinx and Central American immigrant communities, challenging traditional conceptions of community and economic development, where alternative economic activities are fluid, translocal, and interwoven across formal and informal networks that transcend geographical boundaries, blending cultural and economic activities, while enacting citizenship and belonging.