Between Mobility and Immobility: Undocumented African Migrants Living in the Shadow of the Chinese State

Abstract

With China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and the enormous growth of Sino-African trade, Guangzhou, a mega city in South China, has become the Promised Land for many African migrants seeking wealth and fortune in the global economy. Differing from the previous generation of African migrants who were mainly from elite backgrounds and who traveled to China to receive higher education training, this recent wave consisted of mainly traders and petty entrepreneurs who have relatively small amount of capital and who tend to operate their businesses in the informal economy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork within the African diaspora communities in Guangzhou, this chapter examines the structural constraints faced by undocumented Africans under China’s stringent immigration policy and their various coping strategies. It questions the strict division between mobility and immobility by recognizing the existence of a continuum between the two. It further argues that the relationship between mobility and immobility is mediated by both the scale of analysis (local, national, and transnational) and migrants’ different levels of interactions with local society. In the Guangzhou context, the limitation of undocumented African migrants’ motility options can be complemented by their business collaboration and partnership with migrants from less developed areas of China. Collaboration with Chinese migrants enables African traders to bypass some of the constraints imposed by state immigration law. It also expands their motility options beyond Guangzhou to other cities in China.