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Absentee fathers, left‐behind wives and “ghost babies”: Interracial romance and Afro‐Chinese families

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... We also know some of the challenges faced by African deportees from China, especially how deportation contributes to loss of livelihood, which limits men's capacity to perform their roles as husbands, fathers and romantic partners (Jordan et al. 2021;Haugen 2022;Lan 2015b). Some deportee men also become absentee fathers and husbands (Adebayo 2021). Still, there is a dearth of empirical research on the post-deportation experiences and coping of African deportees from China, especially how they appropriate the city towards rebuilding their lives after deportation. ...
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While deportation of Africans is a commonplace practice in China, deportation and its aftermath, as experienced by deportees, remain at the margin of research. This article examined the spatial condition of deportation afterlife using data from a study on the post‐deportation experiences of Nigerian men deported from China. Specifically, it focused on the city as a space and place of post‐deportation coping, including the practices of translocality associated with socioeconomic recovery and reintegration. In doing this, it engaged with how migration experience, deportation loss, masculinity, recalibrated socialities and self‐stigmatisation contribute towards shaping the sense of place and strategies of place‐(re)making of Nigerian deportees. The article enriched the discourse of deportation and the city at the intersection of deportation afterlife, masculinity and deportees' reintegration. It also contributed to the broader deportation literature, especially in the relation to Africans deported from East Asia.
... Similar practices of policemen in Bangkok and Hong Kong can be observed in China where migrants from Africa are insulted or given a fine (see Adebayo, 2021). Lan has pointed out that these practices happen in order to manage economic benefits and produce racial discrimination and ideological anxiety. ...
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Much scholarly and popular ink has been spilled in debates regarding whether contemporary Chinese economic investments in Africa constitute a “New Chinese Empire.” Focusing on macrolevel politics and state-to-state relations, both sides of this debate tend to ignore the everyday lived realities of Chinese migrants and local Africans. In this article, based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork at Chinese-operated mining enterprises in rural Zambia, I analyze intersecting inequalities of class, race, and gender that structure intimate relationships between Zambian women and Chinese men. The constraints on women’s agency that emerge when such relationships end are enmeshed within the wider structural disparities between Zambia and China today. These disparities result as much from the institutional policies of the Chinese state and state-owned enterprises as they do from the behavior of individual Chinese men. Deconstructing official narratives, I demonstrate how these policies operate as a form of “South-South” capitalist extractive patriarchy. [gender, racial capitalism, colonialism, constrained agency, affective labor]
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Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guangzhou and Lagos, this paper explores transnational trade activities and family strategies among Chinese/Nigerian interracial couples in the context of growing China/Africa trade relations and the recent tightening of China's immigration control. It examines how restrictive immigration policy at the state level and anti-black racism at the personal level impact romantic and marriage relations between undocumented Nigerian men and Chinese migrant women from less developed regions in China. I argue that the transnational business and family strategies envisioned and practiced by these couples reflect both the structural constraints in their incorporation into local Chinese society, and their active quest for economic prosperity and upward mobility in the global economy. © 2015 The Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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The purpose of this study is to identify the politics of Chinese netizens' racism toward Africans on the website, ChinaSMACK. Critical and grounded theory analysis reveals that racism on ChinaSMACK (a) is triggered by perceived threats to identity, economic stability, and State fidelity; (b) exists in a paradoxical relationship with globalization; and (c) perpetuates sexist attitudes toward women. We conclude that racism functions politically to disguise criticism of the government, scapegoat Africans for social problems, and obscure netizens' role in perpetuating social inequality.
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Africa-China relations are facilitating different flows and inducing mobilities that have produced Afro-Chinese families in Guangzhou, China. This article examines how Nigerian-Chinese couples construct and embrace contradictory notions of home, as well as how their child upbringing practices manifest this paradox. The article uses data from life history interviews, repeated visits and in social hangouts involving both Nigerian-Chinese couples and individual Nigerian men in interracial marriages. Whereas Nigerian men tend to feel less at home, owing to problems such as perceived Chinese identity exclusivity, the uncertainty of life, and their experiences of discrimination and racism, their Chinese spouses, as internal migrants themselves, also feel similarly unwelcome in Guangzhou. Furthermore, Nigerian-Chinese couples feel obligated to secure the futures of their Afro-Chinese children due to a suspicion that Chinese society may not accept them. The parenting styles, hopes and aspirations revealed by Nigerian-Chinese couples regarding their children show that they view home as an un-centred category.
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As China globalizes, the number of marriages between Chinese people and foreigners is increasing. These Chinese--foreign marriages have profound implications for China's cultural identity. This book, based on extensive original research, outlines the different types of Chinese--foreign marriage, and divorce, and the changing scale and changing patterns of such marriages, and divorces, and examines how such marriages and divorces are portrayed in different kinds of media. It shows how those types of Chinese--foreign marriage where Chinese patriotism and Chinese values are preserved are depicted favourably, whereas other kinds of Chinese--foreign marriage, especially those where Chinese women marry foreign nationals, are disapproved of, male foreign nationals being seen as having a propensity to infidelity, deception, violence and taking advantage of Chinese women. The book contrasts the portrayal of Chinese--foreign marriage with the reality, and with the depiction of Chinese--Chinese marriage where many of the same problems apply. Overall, the book sheds much light on changing social processes and on current imaginings of China's place in the world.
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Lou Jing was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African American father. She never met her father as he left China before she was born, and so was brought up by her mother in a single-parent family. In 2009, Lou Jing entered the Shanghai Dragon TV’s talent show Go Oriental Angel! Lou’s skin colour engendered heated debates among netizens, which became polarized between comments of support and racist slurs against Lou and her mother. This study reveals how mixed heritage subverts the overlapping boundaries of gender, race and Chinese ethnicity, and online debates demonstrate the persistent influences of historical discourses and contemporary context in a rapidly globalizing China. The blogosphere has provided a forum for heated discussions of biopolitics, in which Chinese ethnic identity is continuously contested.
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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.
Love and Marriage in Globalizing China
  • W Pan
  • Abingdon Routledge
  • T M Pfafman
  • C J Carpenter
  • Y Tang
Pan, W. 2014 Love and Marriage in Globalizing China. Routledge, Abingdon. Pfafman, T.M., Carpenter, C.J. & Tang, Y. (2015) The politics of racism: Constructions of African immigrants in China on ChinaSMACK. Communication, Culture & Critique, 8(4), 540-556.
Intercultural Marriage Legal Status and Social Belonging in China: Chinese-African Couples and Families in Guangzhou
  • Y Zhou
Zhou, Y. (2017) Intercultural Marriage, Legal Status and Social Belonging in China: Chinese-African Couples and Families in Guangzhou. Universität zu Köln.
  • T M Pfafman
  • C J Carpenter
  • Y Tang
  • T M Pfafman
  • C J Carpenter
  • Y Tang