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.