Religion-Based Business Ethics among African Muslim Small-Scale Businessowners in Guangzhou, China

Abstract

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research, this article examines how African Muslim migrants build and maintain religious-based business ethics, and how they apply these ethical business norms to help navigate their transnational lives in Guangzhou, China. Most of the African Muslim migrants explored in the article are small-scale businessowners who engage in semi-formal economic activities in both local and home markets. They face racial, cultural, and legal challenges on a daily basis. Unable to access formal means of support due to their precarious economic and legal status, many African Muslim small businessowners rely on informal business ethics to ensure a safe trading environment and mitigate risk. Their business ethics, I argue, are rooted in what I term “religious common ground”—the moral and ethical values shared among migrants from different Muslim groups. This article also explores the enforcing mechanisms of African Muslims small-scale businessowners’ business ethics, such as mosques and co-religion business networks. This article concludes that there is no universal, standard code of conduct among African Muslim businessowners in Guangzhou. Individuals among different Muslim communities have diverse interpretations of business ethics and practices them differently based on their nationality, ethnicity, religious habits, and socio-cultural background. This article contributes to a small but important literature that calls for the center role that religion plays in Muslim migrants’ business practices in a non-Muslim society.