Papers by Heidi Østbø Haugen
Residence Registration in China’s Immigration Control: Africans in Guangzhou
Rapid economic development has transformed China’s place in the global migration order. To respon... more Rapid economic development has transformed China’s place in the global migration order. To respond to these changes, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) drafted the country’s first comprehensive immigration law, which was passed in 2012. The new Exit and Entry Administration Law institutionalized long-standing practices of charging Chinese citizens with enforcing the nation’s outer borders. Penalties for housing and employing undocumented migrants were standardized, and people were required to “duly report” foreigners who illegally enter, reside, or work in China. The law’s inconsistent and vague nature leaves much to be specified through provincial regulations and interpreted by local law enforcement officers. The responsibility for implementing Chinese immigration legislation is largely placed at the subdistrict level, and relies on institutions and instruments that originally were designed to manage internal population movement. Among the most important of these is the ...
Circumstantial migration: how Gambian journeys to China enrich migration theory
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2020
Migration processes are often said to involve elements of choice and constraint in variable measu... more Migration processes are often said to involve elements of choice and constraint in variable measure. However, this bipolar framing may fail to capture the twists and turns in many migrants’ erratic lives. In this article, we introduce the concept circumstantial migration to describe how migration trajectories and experiences unfold in unpredictable ways under the influence of micro-level context and coincidence. We expound on the concept through the case study of a cohort of Gambians who travelled to Guangzhou in South China, unexpectedly found that their prospects in China were limited, and struggled to leave the country. Our analysis examines the particularities of the Chinese immigration regime and its effects while presenting a broader argument against Chinese exceptionalism in migration studies. The concept of circumstantial migration underpins the questions guiding the analysis: how do latent influences trigger immediate circumstances? How do migrants engage with volatile circ...
3.3 Sending Forth the Best: African Missions in China
Almost three years have gone by since I started studying for the degree that has resulted in this... more Almost three years have gone by since I started studying for the degree that has resulted in this thesis. I owe thanks to many people, both for their invaluable help related to the research process and for making these years so personally rewarding. My interest in China was developed through discussions with June Chan, whose thoughts are always inspiring, whether communicated from the top bunk bed when we were roommates, or mailed from Hong Kong. China is as intimidating as it is alluring. Without the encouragement from Elin Saether, I would never have embarked on this project, and I am very grateful for her support and comments throughout the research process. The two semesters I spent in Beijing doing fieldwork and studying Chinese were exciting and enjoyable, but also challenging. I would like to thank the students and teachers at Beijing Normal University and the Princeton in Beijing-program for their humor, patience, and friendship. I am especially thankful for the many kinds of help and advice I received from Liu Ying, Zhang Yanan and Wu Xujun. Members of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee and the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games went out of their way to help me with my research for this thesis. I would like to thank them and the others who took the time to talk to me and who shared their views with me during my fieldwork. I am also grateful for the assistance I got at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen. When I returned from my fieldwork, the Centre for Development and the Environment provided me with excellent working conditions, and I very much enjoyed being an assistant for the Norwegian Network for Asia Studies while I wrote this thesis. I could not wish for a more pleasant and knowledgeable colleague than Harald Bøckman! Terje Wessel and Mette Halskov Hansen were my supervisors through my work on this thesis. I would like to thank them, as well as fellow students and staff at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography and at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, for their helpful and constructive input at different stages in the research process. I also received useful feedback at the Nordic Association of China Studies' iv conference in and the course 'Vagabond capitalism, social reproduction and the politics of scale' at Oslo Summer School of Comparative Social Sciences 2002. The financial support which made this research project possible was provided by the SYLF Foundation, the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, Princeton University, the Chinese-Norwegian Cultural Agreement, and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Finally, I want to thank Jørgen Carling for contributing to this thesis with his analytical and aesthetic skills, for visiting me in Beijing and sharing my excitement over exploring the city by foot and bike, and for being part of my life during these years. Rotterdam, May 2003 Heidi Østbø Haugen This thesis is about how Beijing succeeded in presenting itself as an Olympic city. I will approach this topic through discourse analysis. There has been a growing interest in the role of discourses in social processes in urban geography, as in other social science fields. This development is not uncontroversial, however, and considerable effort has been spent both on criticizing and on defending discourse analysis. In 1996, an article published in Urban Studies pre-made relevant to the Olympic bid, and how Beijing is represented with respect to them. In the second part, I explore how the construction of Beijing as an Olympic city is founded on certain understandings of the concepts of time and spatial scales. The meanings assigned to a place, and the ways the notions of time and spatial scales are understood, are fundamental to how people understand the world and their place within it. Constructing Beijing as an Olympic city INCREASED INTER-URBAN COMPETITION IN PACIFIC ASIA Asian cities are increasingly strategically oriented beyond the national space (Jessop 1999). Intercity competition to attain status as main points of organization of global and regional economic activity has increased in Pacific Asia over the past decades, and intensified following the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Douglass 1998). As transportation costs have decreased, production has been reorganized, and capital has become more footloose, created assets have become more important to the prosperity of cities than their natural resources and past industrial history. The processes of urbanization and economic globalization are mutually reinforcing. Global capital increasingly shapes the landscape and economic activities in cities. On the other hand, the infrastructure offered by key cities is necessary to organize economic activities globally (Sassen 1994). Asian governments often have motivation broader than creating economic growth for promoting a remaking of key metropolitan regions into 'world cities'. These include regime maintenance based on legitimization through internationalization, achieving First World status, and shifting from cultural periphery to becoming creator of cultural symbols (Douglass 2000, Kelly 1997). sector economic activities (Douglass 1998). As inter-urban competition in Pacific Asia has intensified, efforts are made in Chinese cities to improve their images in order to attract people and capital. The Pudong Development Area in Shanghai and the Disney theme park, which Hong Kong won the right to build after a sharp competition with Shanghai, are example of urban mega-projects related to the expansion of the tertiary sector in Chinese cities (Olds 1995, SCMP 08.02.00; 17.11.00).
From Pioneers to Professionals: African Brokers in a Maturing Chinese Marketplace
African Studies Quarterly, 2018
Brokers have played a key role in the establishment and development of African trading communitie... more Brokers have played a key role in the establishment and development of African trading communities in China. Nigerians were the first African businesspeople to settle in the commercial hub of Guangzhou, South China, in the 1990s. They initially focused on trade in used vehicles and spare parts but soon ventured into a wide array of business sectors. Deficient commercial infrastructure in Mainland China initially compelled most foreign merchants to source goods via Hong Kong. This changed as Nigerians and other Africans set up as brokers in Mainland China and made the market accessible to itinerant traders and customers at home. In addition to mediating between itinerant traders and Chinese manufacturers, resident Africans offered accommodation, food, money transfer, interpretation, and logistics services. Initially, the brokers could charge generous commissions, from both Chinese producers and African customers. As the market matured, however, they experienced a double squeeze; clie...
The Professional Georgrapher, 2021
Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisi... more Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisible dynamics of mobility between China and West and Central Africa. It follows the transnational trajectories of African trader women and takes stock of some of the weight that these women shoulder during trips where goods and money are set in motion. The materiality of the transported consumer items shapes traders’ experiences of mobility and immobility. Trader women also must carry immaterial baggage relating to what their mobile, racialized female bodies represent to various people they encounter. Specifically, the Chinese state and general public view their bodies as threats to social order and, in the context of Ebola and COVID-19, as threats to public health. Our analysis also attends to the weight that female scholars metaphorically carry while conducting research. We devote space to addressing our presence as White researchers, thus attending to methodological opaqueness alongsid...
The British Journal of Social Work
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Nigerians once trusted power cables to be safe and compliant with international standards. Today,... more Nigerians once trusted power cables to be safe and compliant with international standards. Today, however, the Nigerian market is rife with substandard cables, which may overheat, shoot out sparks, and cause fires. Power cables have been transformed from commodities with stable and precisely defined properties into entangled objects that can only be known through the actors accompanying them. Marketization scholarship has conventionally focused on efforts and investments to disentangle things from their networks of connections, affording less attention to the specifics of how entanglements are produced. This article examines the role of intermediation in creating entanglements and undermining market orders. The analysis first identifies intermediaries that endeavor to translate the market logic into concrete realities in Nigeria. The second and main part of the analysis draws upon data from ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria and China to assess how intermediaries destabilized the com...
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
A sizable body of popular and academic literature explores how containers have reconstituted the ... more A sizable body of popular and academic literature explores how containers have reconstituted the spaces through which they travel. However, the space within containers remains largely unexamined. This article leverages the concepts of "earmarking" and "pressure" to analyze the space within containers as socially produced rather than arithmetically defined. The analysis draws upon an ethnographic study of container freight from China to Africa. Earmarking describes the practice of attaching segments of shipment space to specific sets of social relations, which in turn defines appropriate usage of the space and bestows it with economic value. African traders earmark space in containers shipped from China as a way to manage their capital in volatile economic environments. Logistics agents apply physical pressure to goods as they are loaded in containers in South China. The practice-made possible by the material characteristics of the container-disrupts the relationship between the container's measurements and the shipment volumes sold, and generates asymmetries across modes of calculating space. Application of pressure renders the relation between containers and goods unstable and shipments vulnerable during customs inspections. Opening the container space for analysis reveals how China's successful logistics integration with Africa relies heavily on political tolerance for disorder and localized solutions.
China–Africa Exports: Governance Through Mobility and Sojourning
Journal of Contemporary Asia
ABSTRACT A centre for Asian and intercontinental immigration and export-oriented production, Guan... more ABSTRACT A centre for Asian and intercontinental immigration and export-oriented production, Guangzhou city is at the forefront of China’s global interactions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines informal governance mechanisms that co-ordinate the circulation of goods and capital between China and Africa. The question addressed is: What roles do mobility and sojourning play in governing trade relations? The analysis is informed by research from three fields: economics scholarship on the trade–migration nexus, ethnographic studies of informal trans-border trade, and historical accounts of long-distance trade in pre-colonial and colonial eras. These traditions point to different ways in which the mobility of people and goods are interlinked. In the case of China–Africa interactions, the flow of goods has increased in tandem with the number of visits by African itinerant traders. The empirical discussion demonstrates that the emergence of intercontinental movements of goods and people between China and Africa was predicated on the brokering role played by African sojourners in Guangzhou. Of particular importance was informal hospitality and logistics infrastructure set up by Africans in the late 1990s, which subsequently evolved and adapted. This infrastructure has facilitated the mobility of people and goods and increased the pace at which trading capital circulates.
Global Networks
In many parts of the world, people access consumer goods mainly via informal economic networks. T... more In many parts of the world, people access consumer goods mainly via informal economic networks. This article analyzes the governance of petty commodity chains through a case study of Chinese fashion jewelry produced for the Ghanaian market. "Petty commodity chains" denotes a particular type of global value chain, where production, trade, and distribution are carried out by small, unregistered businesses, between which personalized relationships and informal infrastructure enable transactions. These chains neither are controlled by lead firms at the production or distribution ends, nor are they made up of pure market linkages. Weak formal institutions and an intensely competitive commercial environment encourage business actors to establish enduring relationships. Credit relations run through long stretches of the chain and create mutual dependencies. The concept of "beholden value chains" is introduced to describe the co-dependency between business actors and the coordination of activities in petty commodity chains.
China's recruitment of African university students: policy efficacy and unintended outcomes
ABSTRACT This article explores how Sino-African relations are affected by the growing number of A... more ABSTRACT This article explores how Sino-African relations are affected by the growing number of Africans who pursue higher education in China. China actively recruits African university students in order to increase soft power and generate income from the export of education services. Semi-structured interviews with African university students suggest that China fails to reach these policy objectives because the students are disappointed with the quality of the education they receive. However, the students engage in trade and contribute to the fast-growing export of Chinese products to African markets, thereby reinforcing the ties between China and Africa in unintended ways.
Time and space in Beijing's Olympic bid
This article examines how Beijing presented an Olympic bid that not only won the city the right t... more This article examines how Beijing presented an Olympic bid that not only won the city the right to host the Olympic Games, but also served to increase the legitimacy of the IOC. Through discourse analysis, it is shown how Beijing was depicted as a natural choice for the next Olympic host city. Certain notions of time and space were fundamental in this presentation. The meanings of concepts related to time and space were determined by their oppositions – ‘modernity’ was defined in relation to ‘underdevelopment’, ‘the new’ was described in relation to ‘the old’, and ‘the West’ was opposed to ‘the Orient’. Beijing was constructed as an Olympic city within the context of two strongly modernist ideologies of the Chinese government and the Olympic Movement. ‘Olympism’ was portrayed as the driving force behind modernity and associated with universalism, the new and the Western world.
China's rapid economic development has been accompanied by new forms of immigration. Investors an... more China's rapid economic development has been accompanied by new forms of immigration. Investors and professionals from developed countries are increasingly joined by a diverse group of immigrants from around the world. While there is a large body of academic literature on Chinese emigration, China's new role as a country of immigration has received less scholarly attention. This paper addresses the dynamics of South-South migration to China through a study of Nigerians in Guangzhou, a major international trading hub. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews and participant observation among African traders and migrants in Guangzhou. The paper contends that Nigerian immigration to China epitomizes global migration trends towards a diversification of migration flows, commercialization of the migration process and increased policing of foreigners within national borders. China was rarely the preferred destination of this study's Nigerian informants but, rather, a palatable alternative, as their aspirations to enter Europe and North America were curtailed by restrictive immigration regimes. They escaped a situation of involuntary immobility in Nigeria through short-term visas obtained with the help of migration brokers. However, opportunities for visa renewals are scant under the current Chinese immigration policy. Undocumented migrants find their mobility severely inhibited: They must carefully assess how, when and with whom they move about in order to avoid police interception. This is a business impediment, as well as a source of personal distress for migrants who engage in trade and the provision of trade-related services. The situation can be described as a ''second state of immobility'': the migrants have succeeded in the difficult project of emigration, but find themselves spatially entrapped in new ways in their destination country.
African Pentecostal Migrants in China: Marginalization and the Alternative Geography of a Mission Theology
African Studies Review, 2013
: The city of Guangzhou, China, hosts a diverse and growing population of foreign Christians. The... more : The city of Guangzhou, China, hosts a diverse and growing population of foreign Christians. The religious needs of investors and professionals have been accommodated through government approval of a nondenominational church for foreigners. By contrast, African Pentecostal churches operate out of anonymous buildings under informal and fragile agreements with law-enforcement officers. The marginality of the churches is mirrored by the daily lives of the church-goers: Many are undocumented immigrants who restrain their movements to avoid police interception. In contrast to these experiences, the churches present alternative geographies where the migrants take center stage. First, Africans are given responsibility for evangelizing the Gospel, as Europeans are seen to have abandoned their mission. Second, China is presented as a pivotal battlefield for Christianity. And finally, Guangzhou is heralded for its potential to deliver divine promises of prosperity. This geographical imagery assigns meaning to the migration experience, but also reinforces ethnic isolation. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and video recordings of sermons in a Pentecostal church in Guangzhou with a predominately Nigerian congregation.
On the edge of the Chinese diaspora: The surge of baihuo business in an African city
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Jul 1, 2005
Since the first Chinese shop opened in Cape Verde in 1995, this remote archipelago has experience... more Since the first Chinese shop opened in Cape Verde in 1995, this remote archipelago has experienced a wave of Chinese entrepreneurial immigration that has transformed local retail and significantly affected people's purchasing power. During this process, Chinese migrants have seen profit margins fall and now complain that there are too many Chinese in Cape Verde. This article explores the migration dynamics that have characterized the pioneer phase of Chinese immigration, and the migrants' understanding of their own position in ...
How An African Outpost is Filled With Chinese Shops
unpublished paper presented at the Fifth …, 2004
ABSTRACT Since the first Chinese shop opened in Cape Verde in 1995, this remote archipelago has e... more ABSTRACT Since the first Chinese shop opened in Cape Verde in 1995, this remote archipelago has experienced a wave of Chinese entrepreneurial immigration that has transformed local retail and had a significant impact on people's purchasing power. In the process, the Chinese migrants have seen profit margins fall, and now complain that there are too many Chinese in Cape Verde. Selling cheap consumer goods to the poor was the recipe for success in Cape Verde, and many Chinese in the country are now looking for ...
This paper explores faith-based constructions of mobility and spatial hierarchies among African m... more This paper explores faith-based constructions of mobility and spatial hierarchies among African migrants in Guangzhou, China. The city hosts a diverse population of foreign Christians: investors and professionals are increasingly joined by migrants from the global periphery. The religious needs of the former group have been accommodated through government approval of a non-denominational church for foreigners. By contrast, Pentecostal churches catering mainly to Africans operate in anonymous hotels and office buildings under informal agreements with law-enforcement officers. These churches are forced to relocate or shut down when their presence becomes too conspicuous. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and video recordings of sermons in one such church, with a predominately Nigerian congregation. The marginality of the churches is mirrored by the daily lives of the church-goers: many are undocumented immigrants who restrain their movements within...
Forum for development studies, 2011
China’s trade relations with Africa have displayed a striking dynamism in the past decade. The sp... more China’s trade relations with Africa have displayed a striking dynamism in the past decade. The spatial distribution of these trade flows is highly uneven: Chinese imports are mainly sourced from a few resource-rich nations, while Chinese exports penetrate most African markets. Small-scale business enterprises have been crucial to the recent surge in the export of Chinese manufactured goods to Africa. The scholarship on the micro-level processes through which these commodities enter Africa has so far focused on the role of Chinese entrepreneurs. This article contributes to the existing literature by addressing the ways in which both African and Chinese actors play a part in strengthening Sino–African trade relations. Based on multi-sited fieldwork with semi structured interviews and participant observation, it explores relationships of competition, complementarity and cooperation between Chinese and African traders. The macro-level trends in Sino–African trade are described using information extracted from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. Given the economic and social significance of the exports from China to Africa, it is important to build a better understanding of the central role played by small-scale businesses and to recognize the role of Africans in shaping Sino–African links.
International Migration, 2021
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Papers by Heidi Østbø Haugen