Pilgrimage to prosperity : business trajectories and networking strategies of sub-Saharan African women traders in Guangzhou

Abstract

Dominant academic discourse in women and globalization studies tends to universalize images of women from the global south either as “victims” or “passive agents” who become more and more restricted to the local during capitalist globalization. This study undertakes research on the transnational experience of sub-Saharan African women traders in Guangzhou who frequently travel through the growing economic tie between sub-Saharan African countries and Guangzhou as well as other international trading hubs. The study aims to challenge the dominant academic discourse by bringing in empirical evidences of the active agencies and flexible networking strategies among those sub-Saharan African women traders whose transnational experience reflect a much more complex relationship between globalization and women from the global south.

The researcher uses a variety of social science research methods including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival studies. Through seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Guangzhou working with sub-Saharan African traders, African and Chinese business agents, and local business communities in Guangzhou, the researcher developed rapports with 50 sub-Saharan African women traders to identify business and networking strategies of these women who are dealing with local particularities of Guangzhou as well as global restructuring of international trade. Moreover, in order to better contextualize daily transnational experience of these women traders, the researcher has also carried out archival studies making use of a good variety of internet and print sources including international, national, and municipal statistics; market intelligence reports; local and international newspapers; government notices; and business operations documents.

Principle findings of this study is that, rather than being highly exploited and restricted locally by capitalist globalization, sub-Saharan African women traders from the global south are constructing globalization by actively expanding their transnational networks making use of all sorts of transnational infrastructures which are intentionally set up in the first place to facilitate global expansion of capitals particularly from the global north.

Guangzhou city, which is housing hundreds of well-established wholesale markets and has been a major world manufacturing center for three decades, provides sub-Saharan African women traders the opportunity to benefit economically from globalization. However, despite Guangzhou’s current significance for their transnational businesses, it is merely a temporary node of the transnational networks of those women traders. Guangzhou is facing fierce competitions from coexistent international trading hubs worldwide and its significance will decline as a result of the constant global restructuring. Those sub-Saharan African women traders on the other hand, have developed their flexible transnational networking strategies by actively making use of market opportunities and a proliferation of transnational infrastructures triggered by this constant global restructuring.

This study contributes some complexities into the dominant academic discourse in women and globalization studies by introducing the transnational life experience of sub-Saharan African women traders who are small players in globalization. It shows that globalization is a continuous process mutually shaping and being shaped by agents worldwide including women from the global south. It highlights that both globalization and women from the global south are highly complex and are both under continuous process of becoming.

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