Paper long abstract:

Street Trade in Venice includes:

- Sub-Saharan migrants selling fake fashion accessories;

- Local shop owners selling genuine such accessories;

- The City Authorities, in particular complying with decisions from the European Community; and

- Mass tourism.

This paper analyses the various levels of "legality" discourses used by, or aiming at the above-mentioned groups of people, especially through public means (blogs, newspapers, public statements). The legal (both documentary, and verbal) reactions to this trade and its agents are connected with: (i) the local context; (ii) the international flow of these fakes; and (iii) the global wanderings, legal or otherwise, of people, both temporary and permanent. Yet, rather than the behaviors of people involved in this trade, it is the legal status (actual or imagined) of the goods that impacts and determines the legal perception of the people involved under this trade by the various (local, regional, national) groups and authorities.