Vu cumprà (Italy)

Vu cumprà 🇮🇹
Location: Italy
Definition: Counterfeits and street vending in Italy
Keywords: Italy – Informal entrepreneurship‏‎ – Off-the-books
Clusters: Survival – System made me do it – Market
Author: Leon Dammone
Affiliation: Alumnus of the UCL School of Slavonic Studies

By Leon Dammone, Alumnus, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

Vu cumprà is a colloquial name, with a somewhat disparaging connotation, for those engaged in the unlicensed street trade selling counterfeit goods in Italy. Although it can be a blanket reference for all non-EU immigrants, including South Asian vendors selling similar items, the term is typically associated with West African street traders specifically selling fashion items (Piromallo 2012). Immigrants with fewer ‘weak’ social ties are heavily reliant on familial and informal immigrant social networks to mobilise workforces, so the practice tends to be ‘confined to a few cliques’ (Granovetter 1973). Nationality, therefore, becomes a dividing line for the types of goods sold in Italian public spaces: Senegalese and Nigerian vendors dominate counterfeit fashion goods, while Indian vendors tend to sell jewellery (Ingenito 2020). Moreover, ‘vu cumprà’ remains an overwhelmingly male phenomenon (Piazzoni 2020). The term vu cumprà is a neologism that emerged from the Italian vuoi comprare? – do you want to buy? – in the mid-1980s mimicking the pronunciation of West African men who worked as street vendors at the time (Faloppa 2011). This mimicry has been used to denigrate marginalised groups in Italy, often immigrants with no formal Italian language education. Despite the slur-like nature of the term, some Afro-Italians have insisted on celebrating the vu cumprà in popular culture, ‘reclaiming’ the term through its semantic reappropriation. This can be seen in music videos online that are celebratory of the vu cumprà lifestyle.

Indeed, in Goraman’s Vucumprà (Rotundo 2009) and Bello Figo’s Sembro vucumprà (2017) the term is repeatedly sung and celebrated. Goraman invites the audience to call him vu cumprà in the chorus of the song, ‘reclaiming the insult as a source of self-worth’ (Dawes 2020). He performs in a track jacket with ‘Senegal’ printed on the front, whilst Bello Figo wears a dashiki, semiotically linking the vu cumprà to West African diasporic communities. By using the term vu cumprà rather than rejecting it outright, those who refer to themselves by this name operate within the discourse that subverts them, transforming the meaning into a title that originated as a mockery to a term embraced alongside African heritage. While most analyses accept that the term is often used against non-EU migrants, particularly African and South Asian people within the context of Italian racism and xenophobia, excluding these connotations and speaking of venditori ambulanti (street vendors) used in official discourse is not an option, as the more neutral terms fail to encapsulate the full picture or evoke all aspects of the practice.

The work of a vu cumprà is illegal and operates within the informal economy (Ministero Dell’Interno 2023). The dichotomy of ‘authentic’ as formal versus ‘counterfeit’ as informal implies that the immoral nature of the practice is twofold. Not only is the act of selling unauthorised due to the lack of a street vendor’s license, but the nature of the goods, being counterfeit, is unauthorised as it contradicts intellectual property (IP) rights. Official discourse focuses on the instrumental motives of those involved euphemised as abusivismo commerciale (commercial abuse) and avoid sensitive issues behind migration and race. For example, the Ministry of the Interior leads annual Spiagge Sciure (safe beaches) campaigns. Money is invested in hiring patrol officers in a regularly updated list of locations, directly aimed at stopping the practice (Ministero Dell’Interno 2023). Here, entrepreneurship is associated with greed and the violation of formal bureaucracy that hinders business. Measures to tackle the problem are somewhat superficial, as the patrol offices follow the practical sense and are not keen to capture, arrest or prosecute street traders. Rather, they use scare tactics to reduce and moderate the practice. Arrests, when they happen, result in a fine of up to $17,500 for illegal vendors (Confesercenti 2024).

'Men line selling counterfeits in a busy underpass in Rome near St Peter's Basilica (2014)'. Source: il Giornale. © Mary Tagliazucchi.

On the other hand, the insider perspective frames the vu cumprà in a way that undermines the official discourse, emphasising authenticity versus forgery. Contextualising the practice as a survival strategy for marginalised individuals, who struggle to find formal employment or obtain a license to trade, redefines it as a social protest against the system with its unsurmountable formal constraints. In Rome, for example, it has become nearly impossible to obtain a street vending license, although it seems straightforward in principle. As the authorities rarely issue licenses for new vendors, immigrants are thus ‘forced to sell irregularly’, while a select few resort to purchasing existing licenses from retiring ‘artisan’ street vendors (priced at approximately 50,000 to 60,000 euros as of 2020) (Piazzoni 2020). Police patrols turn a blind eye to unlicensed vending (both in city centres and on the Spiagge Sicure beaches), but interviews reveal that non-white street vendors are frequently harassed by the police, more so than white street vendors (Piazzoni 2020). This is a prime example of unwritten rules developing in an environment of ‘overregulation and underenforcement of formal rules’ (Ledeneva 2011). Working as a ‘vu cumprà’ has thus emerged as an informal strategy of survival in the eyes of insiders: an unwritten, but well-trodden path. It has been argued that ‘vu cumprà’ offer cheap alternatives to unaffordable high fashion, and arguably serve to promote the brands (Ingenito 2020). Even in areas with a booming tourist economy such as the Campanian Island of Ischia, the main customer demographic for vendors is Italian (Ingenito, 2020, p.26). Street traders are thus presented as having a supportive role in the local economy, rather than simply making money from tourists who come and go.

In an interview, 2008 European Union super-middleweight boxing champion Mouhamed Alì Ndiaye spoke of the need to “open up to diversity” in Italy. He arrived from Dakar in 2000 on a tourist visa, let it expire and stayed in an informal squat whilst working as an unlicensed vu cumprà (Vigarani 2023). Associated with other informal economic activity, such as squatting, the ‘vu cumprà’ way of life is presented as providing Ndiaye with an unstable means of survival on his migratory journey. Furthermore, the vu cumprà lifestyle represents an avenue for those arriving to Europe from Africa in search of a livelihood, especially where the state does not provide.

Institutional ambivalence towards the rights of migrant workers to some extent legitimises the sale of counterfeits from Italian fashion houses through vu cumprà. Whilst the formal argument is that counterfeits are illegal and parasitic, the circulation of fakes has the unintended consequence of raising brand awareness among the less affluent, which may be considered mutually beneficial by customers and brand owners. This line of argument is seen in the Ridley Scott’s 2021 production The House of Gucci, where the Gucci family’s ambivalence towards the sale of counterfeit products is rationalised firstly as a means of providing fashion to those who cannot afford it, but also as a means of promoting Gucci’s brand. Evidence from elsewhere highlights not only the interconnectedness of formal and informal economies in Italy, but also the institutional ambivalence towards intellectual property. Competitive contracting between factories has resulted in the informal circulation of high-quality fashion products that did not make the final cut. Originally made to be authentic, some products are batch-bought and circulated as counterfeits by vu cumprà (Saviano 2006). The dichotomy between authentic and counterfeit becomes blurred in institutional participant perspectives, undermining intellectual property regimes. Vu cumprà are therefore given space to operate as an open secret that complements and supports formal activity (Ledeneva 2011).

In the broader context of West African migratory practices, vu cumprà draws influence from the Mouride Brotherhood, an Islamic Sufi order, while analogous practices exist in France and Spain. What makes ‘vu cumprà’ unique, however, is its Italian context. In a country where the origin of cultural products is highly valued with ‘D.O.P.’ (protected origin) and ‘Made in Italy’ labels, Italian fashion houses have become a source of national pride. However, the moral ambivalence towards intellectual property on the part of institutional actors, such as organised crime groups and fashion houses, are complicit in facilitating this informal practice behind closed doors.