This article focuses on the struggle of a group of street vendors in Belo Horizonte, Brazil – displaced in the run up to the 2014 World Cup – to claim back their traditionally occupied workspace. Their displacement dramatically ruptured their pursuit of dignified livelihoods in the city’s informal economy. Using prolonged ethnography between 2014 and 2016, I describe how the workers engaged with an affective governance regime in which narrow avenues of negotiation are opened but promises are never kept, generating a constant state of unpredictability and possibility. This cycle of hope and frustration demobilises their resistance movement while their charismatic leader struggles to produce and maintain the hope that they might achieve relocation. This labour of hope keeps their association alive but also generates frustration and further demobilisation. The article foregrounds the ambiguous role played by hope in the life of political movements and their everyday relationships with states.

本文重点介绍巴西贝洛奥里藏特的一群街头小贩——在 2014 年世界杯前夕流离失所——为夺回他们传统上占据的工作空间而进行的斗争。他们的流离失所极大地破坏了他们在该市非正规经济中追求有尊严的生计。使用 2014 年至 2016 年间长期的民族志，我描述了工人如何参与一种情感治理制度，在这种制度下，狭窄的谈判渠道被打开，但从未兑现承诺，从而产生一种持续的不可预测性和可能性状态。这种希望和挫折的循环使他们的抵抗运动动摇，而他们富有魅力的领导人则努力产生和维持他们可能实现搬迁的希望。这种希望的劳动使他们的协会保持活力，但也会产生挫败感和进一步的复员。这篇文章突出了希望在政治运动的生活及其与国家的日常关系中所扮演的模棱两可的角色。