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Westafrikanische Händler als Mittler zwischen chinesischer und afrikanischer urbaner Moderne

Antragstellerinnen / Antragsteller Dr. Karsten Giese; Dr. Laurence Marfaing
Fachliche Zuordnung Afrika-, Amerika- und Ozeanienbezogene Wissenschaften
Asienbezogene Wissenschaften
Ethnologie und Europäische Ethnologie
Förderung Förderung von 2011 bis 2018
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 179915180
 
Erstellungsjahr 2019

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

Our research has first highlighted the interactions and relationships between Chinese and African entrepreneurs in markets such as Makola in Accra and the Centenaire in Dakar. Although our preliminary findings initially revealed very few interactions between these groups of actors, we noticed a certain dynamic in terms of strategies of adaptation by the local population to the Chinese presence in these places. Impacts of the Chinese presence and the activities of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants were most directly visible within Chinese-African labor relations and with regardto the potential for structural changes of the economic and social positioning of marginalized groups (young rural migrants, female headporters). Imports of Chinese merchandise enabled the emergence of a new middle class and transformed the lifestyles and consumption patterns of local people. On the basis of these findings, we decided to follow a number of African entrepreneurs in China, more specifically in Yiwu and in Guangzhou. We tried to categorise them by recognising the various strategies of different types of traders and by detecting the networks that were developing along their business trajectories. Consequently, this sparked our interest in the impact of their experiences in China upon their return to Senegal or Ghana – both in their daily lives and in their business management practices. At the same time, because of the African presence in China, we were able to witness strategies deployed by marginalised social groups (such as internal rural-to-urban migrants, ethnic Uyghurs or Hui), especially with reference to their social mobility within the local Chinese society of places, in which large concentrations of African (and middle Eastern) traders were present. However, the degree to which transnational migrants in the framework of globalization from below are able to impact their host societies is largely dependent on the political will and the executive capacities of the host state. As we have noted since the beginning of our investigations on the topic – in China as much as in African countries such as Ghana and Senegal – relations between Chinese and Africans over time have changed their perceptions of each other and, most importantly, have generated shifts in terms of attitude and behaviour, whether in everyday life, in business or with regard to working relationships. The entrepreneurs that were the subject of this research personify “globalisation from below” in their transnational economic practices. They are subjects and actors of transformation, in both African and Chinese societies, in areas as diverse as norms and practices, strategies for access to economic and social resources, habits of consumption, social mobility (whether individual or collective), and ways of living. The mobility of our interlocutors – traders and entrepreneurs as well as businesspeople – is no longer solely considered from the viewpoint of integration into a different society. For African entrepreneurs, China remains one destination among many within their spatial strategies of economic expansion. African businesspeople take into account economic conditions at various localities from an international perspective that also includes Europe, the US, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, and their home countries. However, China in particular has come to act as a demystifying source of idea about the West and the position of Africa in relation to it. While China has by far not allowed all transnational entrepreneurs to realize their business dreams, it has been of immense emancipatory potential to a new class of professional, global business people.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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