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POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE

Popul. Space Place (2015)


Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/psp.1900

Mobility and the Transiency of Social Spaces:


African Merchant Entrepreneurs in China
Tabea Bork-Hffer1,*, Birte Rafenbeul2, Zhigang Li3, Frauke Kraas2 and Desheng Xue3
1
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2
Department of Geography, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
3
School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates how Chinas
heterogeneous African population contributes
to shaping new types of social spaces in
Chinese cities. We analyse how their different
types of collective (primary and corporate)
agency work in the creation of transient spaces,
that is, translocal and transforming spaces in
Guangzhou and Foshan, China. A mixedmethods research approach was applied to
cover the breadth and depth of African
merchants social spaces in both cities. The
results indicate that many African merchants
are mobile individuals linked across China and
across national borders to their home countries
and other countries in which they have lived
and worked. Whereas other authors have
looked into traders migration pathways via
Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Macao to
China, our results also stress the importance of
previous intermediate stations, particularly in
West African states, South Africa, and Dubai.
The transiency of the social spaces of Africans
is underlined by the high mobility of many of
them, including the great inow of new
migrants with trajectories that are often
informed by living in or experiencing a variety
of other societies, business environments, and
living and working conditions. Through their
translocal and transnational activities, experiences,
and trajectories, African merchants contribute to
the emergence of new transient spaces in both
cities, as well as to successful business
performance, which also benets the Chinese
economy and society. Copyright 2015
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

*Correspondence to: Tabea Bork-Hffer, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
E-mail: aritbh@nus.edu.sg

Accepted 4 September 2014

INTRODUCTION

hinas steep economic rise, which has


taken place particularly in the booming
cities along the East Coast, has attracted
not only the inux of hundreds of millions of
rural-to-urban migrants but also an increasing
number of international migrants (Pieke, 2010).
A mixture of foreigners with different origins,
backgrounds, education, and occupations is
owing into the country with the aim to work
there for international companies, to study, or
to open a business and take part in Chinas
unprecedented economic rise. The presence of
Africans in Mainland China has particularly
grown since 1997 (Bodomo & Ma, 2012). The
great majority of them are involved in the
trading business, whereas others study at
Chinese universities or work in a variety of other
occupations (e.g. educational or diplomatic
services sectors, professional sports, and the
arts) (cf. Bodomo, 2012).
African migration to China is mainly urban
bound. Although Africans have moved to many
of the major cities in China, Guangzhou, Yiwu,
Hong Kong, and Macao have received the
largest numbers of Africans. As the location of
the China Import and Export Fair, Guangzhou,
located in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), has
traditionally been a focal point for traders. Since
the 1990s, it became the major hub for Africans
in China. Yiwu, located in the Yangtze River
Delta, which is another coastal area in China with
rapid economic growth as a world industrial
capital during the past three decades, currently
has the worlds largest commodity market and
has developed into the second most important
Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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