Livia Cangiano Antipon
Livia Cangiano Antipon (http://lattes.cnpq.br/8378003332402652) is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of Campinas (Campinas /SP, Brazil). Her research focuses on Urban Political Economy, and at the intersection between urbanization and food supply in the urban networks of the Brazilian Amazon region, specifically in São Luís, the capital city of Maranhão State (Northeast Brazil). She holds an MA in Human Geography from the same university and was a visiting researcher at Food Observatory (ODELA) at the University of Barcelona as well as an exchange student at the Department of Geography, History and Social Sciences at the University of Paris VII. At CPCP, she is a PhD visiting scholar. Livia’s research is supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brazil.
Collected Work
“Feeding the Enclave: Special Economic Zones, Street Food Vendors, and the Dynamics of Urban Economy in Tema, Ghana”
This article investigates the everyday interactions between highly capitalized firms operating within the Tema Free Zone (TFZ) in Ghana and low-capital street food vendors working in and around the enclave. Drawing on Milton Santos’s theory of the two circuits of the urban economy, it examines how industrial production and informal food vending are dialectically articulated – functionally interdependent yet structurally asymmetrical. While formal firms in the TFZ operate within export-oriented global circuits, popular food vendors sustain the daily reproduction of industrial labour by providing affordable meals and services under precarious conditions. Based on qualitative fieldwork (interviews and systematic observation), and cartographic documentation, the analysis highlights the vendors’ supply networks, spatial practices, and capacity to mobilize local and regional scales. The study demonstrates that SEZs are not isolated enclaves but hybrid and porous urban formations whose productivity depends on the everyday economies that surround them. By foregrounding these relational dynamics, the article contributes to a non-dualist understanding of urban economies, capturing the intertwined arrangements between economic actors that operate under different forms of organization, and access to capital, labour, and technology within the city.
“Mobile Work: Handcart and Bicycle Workers Across the Urban Economy of Greater Accra Region”
This article explores the role of handcart and bicycle workers—mobile workers—in the urban economy of Accra and Tema, Ghana. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, it shows how their practices of food vending, e-waste collection and mobile trade exemplify a form of relational infrastructure that sustains urban life through improvisation, cooperation and mobility. By engaging AbdouMaliq Simone's concept of people as infrastructure and Milton Santos's theory of urban economic circuits, the paper highlights how these workers articulate local practices with broader flows of capital in African cities.