“The Chinese” in Nigeria: Discursive Ethnicities and (Dis)embedded Experiences

Abstract

In the emerging Africa–China studies, ethnography has been employed to demystify the monolithic Chinese presence in Africa. Drawing on recent concerns about “discourse” in ethnographies of Chinese migrants in Africa, this article recommends the exploration of “discursive ethnicities”: a term coined to frame a conceptualization of ethnicity that, while embedded in migrant experiences, is embodied through discursive practices. Based on inductive analysis of ethnographic fieldwork with Chinese migrants, we propose a framework of discursive ethnicities in the discursive field of “the Chinese” in Nigeria, in which specific subethnicities (Hongkongese, Taiwanese, Fujianese, etc.) emerge, change, or are dismissed, alongside other-ethnicities that are embodied in narrating Nigerians in specific ways as mirrors of Chinese individuals’ self-ethnicities. We also discuss how both embedded and disembedded experiences contribute to embodied discursive Chinese ethnicities. The article concludes that “discursive ethnicities” provides a nonessentialist means of understanding the cognition of ethnicity and discourse in migrant experiences.