Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa

Who are ‘the Chinese’ in Africa? Why are they there? As China’s engagement with African countries intensifies, and the size of the Chinese population in Africa increases, these questions have elicited substantial attention. Many attempts to provide answers, especially in the media and popular public...

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Main Authors: Sullivan, Jonathan, Cheng, Jing
Format: Article
Published: SAGE 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52230/
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author Sullivan, Jonathan
Cheng, Jing
author_facet Sullivan, Jonathan
Cheng, Jing
author_sort Sullivan, Jonathan
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Who are ‘the Chinese’ in Africa? Why are they there? As China’s engagement with African countries intensifies, and the size of the Chinese population in Africa increases, these questions have elicited substantial attention. Many attempts to provide answers, especially in the media and popular publications, are problematically based on uninformed stereotypes and undifferentiated notions of ‘the Chinese’, by implication a homogeneous group lacking contextualisation. Seeking to address such characterisations, this paper uses the digital communications of present and prospective Chinese migrants to provide a more nuanced picture of the motivations, preoccupations and migration experiences of private entrepreneurs and state-owned enterprise workers.
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spelling nottingham-522302020-05-04T19:39:18Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52230/ Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa Sullivan, Jonathan Cheng, Jing Who are ‘the Chinese’ in Africa? Why are they there? As China’s engagement with African countries intensifies, and the size of the Chinese population in Africa increases, these questions have elicited substantial attention. Many attempts to provide answers, especially in the media and popular publications, are problematically based on uninformed stereotypes and undifferentiated notions of ‘the Chinese’, by implication a homogeneous group lacking contextualisation. Seeking to address such characterisations, this paper uses the digital communications of present and prospective Chinese migrants to provide a more nuanced picture of the motivations, preoccupations and migration experiences of private entrepreneurs and state-owned enterprise workers. SAGE 2018-12 Article PeerReviewed Sullivan, Jonathan and Cheng, Jing (2018) Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53 (8). pp. 1173-1187. ISSN 1745-2538 China; Africa; Migration; Online communications; Personal narratives http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021909618776443# doi:10.1177/0021909618776443 doi:10.1177/0021909618776443
spellingShingle China; Africa; Migration; Online communications; Personal narratives
Sullivan, Jonathan
Cheng, Jing
Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title_full Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title_fullStr Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title_full_unstemmed Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title_short Contextualising Chinese migration to Africa
title_sort contextualising chinese migration to africa
topic China; Africa; Migration; Online communications; Personal narratives
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52230/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52230/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52230/