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The Social Construction of Guangzhou as a Translocal Trading Place
[journal article]
Abstract "Guangzhou has become a key destination for sub-Saharan African traders. These traders have established multilocal forms of business organisation and, in so doing, have developed diverse practices to overcome geographical, political and cultural boundaries. This paper focuses on these practices, loo... view more
"Guangzhou has become a key destination for sub-Saharan African traders. These traders have established multilocal forms of business organisation and, in so doing, have developed diverse practices to overcome geographical, political and cultural boundaries. This paper focuses on these practices, looking at the ways in which the movements, relations and interactions within these organisational formations are produced, transformed and lived. A close ethnographic examination was made of the livelihoods of 33 African traders from 13 sub-Saharan African countries. Through the concept of trans-locality, the organisational formations of these Africans are conceptualised as links between different places on a larger geographical scale; these links then meet on a local scale in the specific place of Guangzhou. Following a relational understanding of spatial constructions in social science, these links are conceptualised as one of the main drivers for the social construction and transformation of the city as a trans-local trading place." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
commerce; businessman; entrepreneur; informal sector; ethnography; cultural factors; cultural identity; social construction; China; migrant; labor migration; Africa South of the Sahara
Classification
Migration, Sociology of Migration
Economic and Social Geography
Document language
English
Publication Year
2015
Page/Pages
p. 17-47
Journal
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 44 (2015) 4
Issue topic
Foreign Lives in a Globalising City: Africans in Guangzhou
ISSN
1868-4874
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed