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JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020, pp. 1-22
© Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2021
(ISSN 0851–7762)
Academic (Im)mobility:
Ecology of Ethnographic Research and Knowledge
Production on Africans in China
Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo*
Abstract
Since the emergence of China in the geopolitical and economic spaces of Africa,
academics have followed Chinese and African people moving in both directions
and conducted on-the-ground, cross-border ethnographies. However, academics
are not equally mobile. This autoethnography analyses the intersections of
ethnography, mobility and knowledge production on ‘Africans in China’
through a critical exploration of the contextual issues shaping the unequal
participation of Africa-based researchers in the study of Africa(ns) in a non-
African setting. Based on my experiences before, during and after migration
to Guangzhou city, I demonstrate that ‘being there,’ fetishised as ideal-type
anthropology, conceals privilege and racial and power dynamics that constrain
the practice of cross-border ethnography in the global South.
Résumé
Depuis l’émergence de la Chine dans les espaces géopolitiques et économiques
de l’Afrique, les universitaires ont suivi les Chinois et les Africains évoluant dans
les deux sens, et ont mené, sur le terrain, des ethnographies transfrontalières.
Cependant, les universitaires ne sont pas aussi mobiles. Cette auto ethnographie
analyse les intersections de l’ethnographie, de la mobilité et de la production de
connaissances sur les « Africains en Chine » à travers une exploration critique des
questions contextuelles qui façonnent la participation inégale des chercheurs ba-
sés en Afrique à l’étude de l’Afrique et des africains dans un cadre non-africain.
Me basant sur mes expériences avant, pendant et après ma migration vers la ville
de Guangzhou, je démontre que le « être là », fétichisé en tant qu’anthropologie
de type idéal, dissimule des privilèges et des dynamiques raciales et de pouvoir
qui contraignent la pratique de l’ethnographie transfrontalière dans le Sud global.
* Research Fellow, Diaspora and Transnational Studies Unit, Institute of African Studies,
University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Email: oluwatoyinkudus@gmail.com
2JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
Introduction
On 11 June 2018, Vivian Lu and Mingwei Huang circulated a short
survey report through the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research
Network (CA/AC). With the surge in scholarly interest in the dynamics of
interactions between China and Africa, Lu and Huang (2018) attempted
to understand how those taking part in China-Africa (or Africa-China)
studies conduct ethnographic eldwork, including the impact of the
politics of eld access and exclusion. Some of the key ndings of the authors
can be summarised into a thesis that captures the condition under which
knowledge on ‘Africans in China’ is produced today. eir claim is that
while many Africa-China scholars can do ethnography in China or African
countries, race and nationality, institutional positions and locations across
continents determine who gets to participate. African researchers identied
access to Chinese visas as a major barrier.1 While the report is limited by
its largely descriptive approach, it is nonetheless timely and instructive as
it calls attention to the ‘spatial grounding’ of African academics ‘in place’,
posing a challenge to the promise of ethnography in Africa-China studies.
Since the emergence of China in the geopolitical and economic spaces
of Africa, academics in universities and institutes in both the northern and
southern hemispheres have followed the Chinese state and business enterprises
where they went. Academics are also fascinated with how Africans have
moved in the other direction, beaming searchlights to understand, interpret
and predict the dynamics of an unfolding process. In this way, researchers
reached critical mass as knowledge producers on the character of the Africa-
China interactions. In many cases, the researchers produce knowledge by
conducting on-the-ground ethnographies (Lu and Huang 2018), which often
involve some form of cross-border mobility. Unfortunately, academics are not
equally mobile! (Grgurinović 2013; Mau et al. 2015; Neumayer 2006).
For too long, the context within which Africa-based researchers conduct
ethnography outside the African continent has not been brought to the fore
of scholarly analysis. This is due to the fact that a significant amount of
studies conducted in African humanities and social science disciplines are
locally grounded (Alatas 2003), rarely involving cross-continental mobility
for fieldwork. By analysing the intersections of ethnography, mobility and
knowledge production in ‘Africans in China’ research, I seek to highlight the
contextual issues that structure the (un)equal participation of Africa-based
researchers in the study of Africa(ns) in a non-African setting. I contend
that ‘being there’, fetishised as ideal-type anthropology, conceals privilege
and racial and power dynamics that constrain the practice of cross-border
ethnography in the global South.
3
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
Essentially, I reflect on academic (im)mobility2 as a distinct form of
movement in Africa-China interactions, with an interest in analysing how
knowledge production on ‘Africans in China’ is shaped by the structures
of constraints and opportunities within which ‘migration for ethnography’
occur. I frame academic (im)mobility as a prerequisite and vehicle for
producing knowledge on cross-cultural interactions and possibilities, and
specifically treat ethnography as a knowledge-making tool that all scholars
researching the African experience globally should be able to employ. In this
autoethnographic account, which is based mainly on my experiences before,
during and after migration to Guangzhou city as a doctoral student, I reflect
on the barriers embedded in the structures within which a Nigerian scholar
seeks to participate in documenting the lived experiences of Nigerians in
China. This pursuit is motivated by both an invitation and a charge. The
invitation comes from Larsen (2016:90) when she writes that focus should
be on how ‘…knowledge is created, shaped, and changed through its mobile
conditions of production’. The charge, on the other hand, originates from
Grgurinović’s intention:
To open the space for a critical consideration of the uncritical, unifying
discourse of academic immobility as an aspect of wider politics of science,
education, and knowledge, which puts great emphasis on mobility as an
important factor in what is vaguely defined as scientific ‘excellence’ (of
institutions and individual scientists). (Grgurinović 2013:156)
In the rest of the article, I adopt a reexive methodology, ‘…in the sense of
seeing ourselves in a mirror, of ourselves being the object of our thought’
(Bruce and Yearly 2005), to think through correspondences with China-
and West-based academics and collaborators while planning my journey,
as well as my experiences at the Chinese embassy in Lagos and port of entry
in Guangzhou. Reexivity emphasises the importance of self-knowledge
and sensitivity, the role of self and impact of positionality in the creation
of knowledge (Berger 2015). Advancing reexivity, Bourdieu (2003)
proposes ‘participant objectivation’ in which our personal experiences can
become analytical resources to produce epistemic and existential benets
once we subject them to sociological control through self-socio-analysis.
He believes ‘…that scientific knowledge and knowledge of oneself and of
one’s own social unconscious advance hand in hand’ (Bourdieu 2003:289).
To adopt a reexive approach, therefore, implies that the researcher is the
‘principal character’, not just the ‘central character’, he is his own key
informant; or simply, the researcher and researched are one and the same
(Davies 2002).
4JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
Epistemic Domination, Mobility and Knowledge Production in Africa
Adebanwi (2016:353) writes that ‘the fate of the knowledge industry is the
measure of all progress – economic, social and political’. Unfortunately,
the global division of intellectual labour is unequally distributed and
it is structured in a way that impacts negatively on the production of
knowledge in Africa. Alatas (2003) decries the subordinate status of
knowledges of the ird World, which includes most of Africa, due to the
relentlessness of academic dependency even after political independence.
He argues that intellectuals of the ird World rely on, and their scholarly
output is conditioned by, Western social sciences. In addition to the
divisions around theoretical and empirical intellectual labour on the one
hand, and the separations formed along the lines of doing comparatist
versus single-case studies on the other hand, Alatas (2003:607) highlights
perceptively the division between doing ‘other country studies and own
country studies’.
Arowosegbe (2016) posits that knowledge production on Africa happens
within a historically determined and on-going power asymmetry, and that
the political and economic domination of the African continent by the West
has sustained epistemic dependency in African universities. Other scholars
have raised the problem of epistemic domination of Africa by Western
social sciences in different ways (Omobowale 2013; Keim 2008). Keim
(2008), for instance, attempts to explain the marginality of Africa (and
other developing countries in Latin America and Asia) in the production
of social scientific knowledge by using the centre-periphery-model. Much
in the fashion of dependency theorising, and focusing especially on the
sociological enterprise, he argues that the sociologies of Western Europe
and the United States are at the centre while the global South occupies
the periphery. In Keim’s (2008) model, however, there is no place for the
‘semi-periphery.’ Ake (2011) discusses the role of globalisation in deepening
imperialism in African social sciences.
Strikingly, the question of epistemic domination in African knowledge
production space is rarely discussed alongside issues of African mobilities,
especially academic mobility under the condition of unequal globalisation.
Interrogating this neglect is important because the sovereign right to control
who crosses or remains shut out of borders still lies largely with nation-states
despite the fact that globalisation is alive and well (Britz & Ponelis 2012).
Tighter border controls in the global North were no doubt influenced by
the rise in terrorism threats since 9/11 (Brooks & Waters 2011; Favell,
Feldblum, & Smith 2007; Larsen 2016). While the more affluent countries
5
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
are unlikely to transcend their terrorist fears any time soon, concerns about
economic migrants from poor countries who may decide to stay put after
arrival continue to put immigration at the centre of national debates and
policy discourses (Neumayer 2006).3
So, the borders that globalisation optimists claim have opened up are
fast closing again, only permitting certain people, designated as wanted,
while keeping out the unwanted ‘others’ (Mau et al. 2015). Specifically,
Mau et al. (2015) find that while visa-free mobility has increased over the
past 40 years, not all countries benefitted equally, with wealthy countries
gaining more mobility rights while the same rights stagnated or diminished
for others, particularly for African countries. In essence, stricter visa rules are
being deployed as a tool for disciplining people from some parts of the globe
(Neumayer 2006). Through the cost and processing of visa applications,
and the unilateral powers of the street-level bureaucracy to deny visas,
receiving states are able to end mobilities before they begin (Lee, Paulidor
& Mpaga 2017). This makes globalisation a deeply conflicted process,
in that unprecedented mobility is accompanied by enforced immobility
(Neumayer 2006).
As a sub-category of mobile people, academics are feeling the effects
of contemporary border dynamics, albeit varied in degrees. In spite of the
possibility of facilitating the deterritorialisation of knowledge production,
Larsen (2016:81) posits that academic mobility is not possible for all. At the
same time that the disjunctive nature of global flows creates possibilities,
inconsistencies and social inequalities still persist, owing specifically to ‘…
the geopolitical power dimensions of academic mobility and inequalities
that exist between and among academics based on race, gender, class, and
other contextual factors’ (Larsen 2016:92). Like other forms of mobility,
she contends that ‘mobility capital’ is dispersed unevenly among academics,
with implications for the character of knowledge produced and circulated
in the globalised era.
African scholars in particular move cross-continentally under a
condition of global academic migration inequality. Between 2018 and
2019 alone, scholarly communities and media organisations in the global
North disseminated several sensational statements and reports that capture
the entrenched nature of enforced immobility against African academics.4
Noting that a significantly high proportion of academic conferences take
place outside Africa, Britz and Ponelis (2012) state that Africans travelling
on the passports of African countries face strict visa restrictions from most
countries in the global North. The reasons, they insist, are geographic,
financial and political in nature. In their words:
6JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
The international traveling problem for academics from Africa is part of
a wider international vocal debate on immigration that is spurred by not
only national security but also by ideology, economic interest and negative
perceptions. National safety and pride as well as own economic interest have
many times resulted into narrowing the door for immigrants and as a result
translated into legal barriers for traveling scholars (Britz & Ponelis 2012:473).
is captures the situation of Nigerian academics. Nigerian academics
planning to attend conferences and trainings in countries across the global
North often nd that their mobility destiny is inevitably linked with the
destiny of the Nigerian international migrant population. In an attempt to
escape poverty and secure a better life abroad, many young Nigerians visit
foreign embassies with manufactured documents to improve their chances
of obtaining a visa (Akanle et al. 2013). Many of them are stereotyped at
the embassies of the US, Britain, Canada and many Schengen countries,
as ‘illegals,’ and ‘absconders’ who routinely assemble fake documents to
secure a visa. In the words of Obadare and Adebanwi (2010:42), ‘the
would-be migrant is largely regarded by the consular ocials as a vagrant
[and] the average Western consulate in Nigeria is a space of abjection
and humiliation’.
It is not unusual for Nigerian academics to regard embassies as spaces
of abjection as well because the stereotyped image of Nigerians is normally
deployed when dealing with scholars. As Akanle et al. (2013:87) observe,
‘when Nigerian academics apply for visas, they are usually treated with the
same disrespect and suspicion as other Nigerians, in part because it is difficult
to ascertain their true status and because lecturers are not seen as immune
to fraudulent visa applications’. Sometimes, the embassies request ‘special
documents’ from Nigerian academics, and visa rejection is fairly common
even after supplying the requested documents and paying the necessary fees,
both to the embassies and the intended academic meetings, thereby leading
to a waste of resources in an already low-resource environment (Akanle et al.
2013; Obadare & Adebanwi 2010).
The visa regime that limits African intellectual mobilities impacts
negatively on development, creativity, and knowledge sharing, with
implications for the questions of social (Britz & Ponelis 2012) and epistemic
justice. Akanle et al. (2013) complain that because of the visa challenge,
African-generated knowledge remains at the margins of global scholarship.
The inability of African scholars to travel because of the inequality in global
visa regimes limits the participation of Africa in the global knowledge
economy. This further entrenches the already skewed global knowledge
structure into a deeply one-sided understanding of the world.5
7
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
All of this reveals how the dominant narrative of globalisation masks the
pre-eminence of borders which continue to keep some people out based
on geography of origin, stereotypes and stigmatisation. However, much
of the discussion and many of the analyses focus on African academics
who visit the West, usually on a short-term basis, to attend conferences
and workshops. Not much is being done to understand African academic
immobility in the context of Afro-Asia interactions nor the ways that barriers
in emerging powerhouses like China constrain Africa-based ethnographic
endeavours that are oriented towards understanding the lives of Africans
residing in Chinese cities. Also, the centre-periphery model in intellectual
labour inequalities (Keim 2008) overlooks the unequal relations between
the periphery and semi-periphery areas. With advances in Africa-China
relations, I argue that China should be approached as a node of interest for
ethnographic and social scientific activities for African scholars. For one,
cities in mainland China host a significant African population. There is
no doubt that this population is relevant for understanding social change
processes in China and Africa. More importantly, China-bound migration is
now an aspect of the modern history of Africa, the documentation of which
should involve scholars working from and in both regions and elsewhere.
In the next section, I describe my experience as a Nigerian-based doctoral
student seeking ethnographic information on Nigerians in China.
e Study of Africans in the World: Doing Ethnography in China
e inow of African students into China for educational purposes and
their experiences in various Chinese cities are being documented by
‘Africans in China’ researchers (Bredeloup 2014; Haugen 2013; Ho 2017;
Li 2013). However, most of these students are on government bilateral
scholarships and enrolled in STEM or short-term Chinese culture and
language programmes. e knowledge produced from participating in
these programmes makes little contribution towards understanding the
transformations that the African presence in China is bringing about.
When I decided to study the Nigerian migrant community in China, I
engaged colleagues and faculty members to know what they thought. While
the former wondered if all the problems in Nigeria had been researched,
most of those in the latter group warned me about the impossibility of my
pursuit. One faculty member, having reminded me of my ‘Nigerian-ness’
and talking about my placement in the global South and financial status
as self-sponsored student, told me stories of friends who abandoned PhD
pursuits midway after wasting their time chasing ‘ambitious’ research.
8JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
The two groups mentioned above are part of the social organisation
within which I would conduct research that had not begun but was already
dead on arrival. Framed as pragmatic advice, I was admonished to subject
myself to an honest evaluation, to think about funding and the demands
of cross-continental mobility particularly. However, by proposing that I
should abandon the original idea for more localised research, I noticed that
a more fundamental assumption of other doctoral students and faculty is
that an African based in an African university is not supposed to participate
– or is incapable of participating – in a debate on Africans residing in a non-
African country.6 Certainly, the protracted problem of lack of funding for
doctoral research has created a culture or tradition within Nigerian academe
where students have come to believe that engaging in ethnographic research
outside the African continent is not possible or wise.
Being at the very early stage of my research, it would have been a good
time to abandon the idea. However, I had convinced myself to believe that,
in choosing to study Nigerians in China, I would be well-positioned to
participate in constructing a history of Africa that is still unfolding – a
responsibility that Western and Asian scholars had taken on at the time. I
was focused on the implications of my ‘pragmatic’ move, whether it would
matter, over the short- or long term. My PhD supervisor was on board all
the way. Having taught about sociological theory for many decades and
having introduced graduate students to issues in diaspora theorising, he
was naturally disposed to support my research interest. The key research
puzzle for me was to understand the gamut of processes, social relations and
practices with which Nigerians increasingly settle as migrants in Guangzhou,
the largest city in south China.
The first major hurdle for the research was funding. Many African
universities lack access to research funds, and the problem is worse in social
sciences and humanities disciplines. In a chronically resource-poor setting
like Nigeria, institutional funding for research is almost non-existent.
Most doctoral students in Nigerian universities are self-financed. As the
first national university in the country, the University of Ibadan, where I
was enrolled, is one of the few universities in Nigeria that provides some
financial support to doctoral students.7 However, the funds available within
the university are often inadequate to conduct ethnographic fieldwork,
especially a cross-border kind. For transnational ethnographic activity, a
doctoral researcher is no doubt immobile. As a result, I was constrained
to look outwards for other funding sources, some of which you only stand
a chance of getting if you are capable and willing to re-think, un-think,
abandon or readapt your research proposal, proposition and focus. Being
adaptive, in these senses, is ‘being creative’!
9
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
Once the issue of funding was resolved (sources listed at the end of the
paper), I was confronted with the problem of travel logistics. Over the course
of a two-year planning and waiting period, I learned that academic mobility
for ethnographic fieldwork is neither a neutral nor a straightforward process,
but rather an activity that takes place within structures of institutional
inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, global inequality and racialised hierarchies
of power, visa black-market economies and mobility informalisation. To
plan my travel, I checked the visa requirements on the website of the Chinese
embassy in Nigeria and found that I was qualified to apply for an ‘F’ visa
which is ‘issued to foreigners who intend to go to China for exchanges,
visits, study tours, etc.’8 The documents required for the ‘F’ visa were:
1. Application form;
2. International passport data page;
3. Original invitation letter of duly authorised unit or conrmation letter of
invitation issued by the Chinese government departments, companies and
social organisations authorised by the Chinese Foreign Ministry;
4. Appropriately stamped invitation letters issued by a relevant unit or
individual, with information of applicant and inviting entity/individual and
details of planned visit;
5. Letter of introduction from applicant’s place of work detailing relevant
personal information and purpose of visit;
6. Latest six months bank statements with minimum of N4 million deposit,9
and;
7. Any other documents deemed necessary by the Chinese embassy.
Depending on the number of entries requested and the duration of stay, visa
costs range from a minimum of N8,000 (or $50) to N24,000 (or $150).
Also, consular ocers have the sole right to determine the visa validity
period, number of entries and duration of stay, and may also alter or cancel
issued visas without explanation.
Of the documents required for a visa application, item numbers 1, 2,
and 5 were easily assembled. As a doctoral student without a job, item
number 6 appeared preposterous. Item number 7 is a standard line in
almost all embassies to give room for operational latitude. This could be
ignored for now as its impact on my mobility could not be readily assessed.
The difficulty with Chinese visa applications centres was on item numbers
3 and 4 since both cannot be obtained without interfacing with Chinese
scholars and education institutions, preferably universities.
Being a member of a major Africa-China research network, I reached
out to experienced researchers, including three senior Chinese researchers
at universities in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Wuhan. In the two years that I
10 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
worked on mobility logistics, two other senior academics based in European
and American universities but with strong ties to Chinese universities also
helped.10 I exchanged several dozen emails over the two years and the
responses were generally good, with most people expressing a willingness to
help. Senior academics in Chinese universities were particularly responsive
and helpful. Nevertheless, many long correspondences met a brick wall as
the institutions could not supply me with the document I needed the most.
I obtained a police clearance and did an extensive medical investigation
that included HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B examinations and posted all
the originals to China via a courier service. In all, I received five letters of
invitation: two came from a renowned Chinese scholar based in Guangzhou;
two from another Chinese scholar, the first while he was based in Guangzhou
and the second when he moved to another university outside Guangzhou;
the last one was issued by a young Chinese scholar who recently tenured in
a Beijing university. Of course, the original letters arrived at different times
through courier services. Also, prior to issuing some letters, I was told to
prepare a plan of daily activities that spanned three months, stating where
I would be at what time and what specific activities I planned to carry out.
When I approached the Chinese embassy in Lagos with the documents,11
I found that my application could not be accepted without an ‘Original
Invitation Letter of a Duly Authorised Unit’ (OILDAU) – item number 3.
The OILDAU is issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry (CFM) and the
organisation or individual intending to invite a foreigner ought to apply
for it. My interactions with Nigerians employed to check documents at the
Chinese embassy and visa agents indicated that no application is processed
without the OILDAU. With the back-and-forth exchanges with Chinese
professors and helpers, the OILDAU would dominate our discussions and,
at the same time, be a source of disappointment – and depression.
What is this OILDAU and why is it so obscure and out of reach? Most of
the Chinese scholars I worked with were not aware of the so-called OILDAU.
One professor approached the international affairs office of his university to
make inquiries and was told that it would take several months to get it.
Two other helpers said that the CFM was not issuing the documents to
Nigerians.12 The more I interfaced with these gatekeepers and those offering
assistance in China, the clearer it became that, in the structure of mobility
from Nigeria to China, the OILDAU is a best-kept industry secret.
Through the tangled process of assembling travel documents, I was
advised to pursue other options. One of these was to register as a language
student or for a year-long cultural programme that is supported by the
government of China in Chinese universities. I had spent a lot of time on
11
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
my PhD already and there was still no guarantee that I would be selected for
the programmes.13 Another worthwhile suggestion, which I had not thought
of, was to explore, if available, the active Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) of my home university with universities in China. The University of
Ibadan has an Office of International Programmes (OIP) which coordinates
such affairs. The Director of the OIP agreed to meet me, and my interactions
with her showed her readiness to assist.14 Unfortunately, the office had no
MOU that would work for me. On the one hand, my university did not have
a relationship with a university in Guangdong Province where I planned to
do research. On the other hand, existing relationships were applicable to
mobilities for exchange programmes targeting undergraduate students.
Informality and Chinese Visa Market Economy in Nigeria
While I explored ‘mobility options’, I maintained a constant presence in my
academic department in Nigeria. I was stuck, and waiting in the sense of ‘waiting
out a crisis’ (Hage 2009). In fact, my ‘directionlessness’ troubled a professor
who tried to help by contacting a friend at Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Aairs.
With his mobile phone on loudspeaker, I heard the contact express pessimism
about the feasibility of getting the Chinese visa the ‘normal way.’ e alternative
way he proposed would cost up to N800,00015 for a 30-day ‘M’ (business) visa
but there was no guarantee. Of course, from my interactions with visa agents, I
knew the cost was exaggerated, and that I would require less than that amount
if I were to patronise the informal Chinese visa market.
Still willing to help, the same professor offered another way out of my
visa problem. He encouraged me to pray as only God could resolve my visa
problem. Given the fact that I had funding sources and travel experience, he
believed my condition could not be left to the physical realm. As a strategy
for navigating socially inexplicable occurrences, the professor suggested
prayers. This suggestion is not surprising for two reasons. One, over my
years as a graduate student, the professor had become familiar with my
general disinterest in religion, and had, at different times, tried to get
me to turn to Christianity. Second, and most crucially, religion, even in
its transnational form, is a crucial part of the visa economy in Nigeria. As
Obadare and Adebanwi (2010) reveal, migration in Nigeria is treated as a
spiritual phenomenon needing divine intervention. Traveling abroad, they
continue, involves the services of traditional juju men, Islamic Alfas and
Christian pastors and evangelists. The reliance on religion, they discover, is
‘…necessitated by the uncertainties built into both the particular process
of getting entry visas…and with emigration from the country as a whole’
(Obadare & Adebanwi 2010:36).
12 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
The informal Chinese visa market, with its extensive link to centres in
China, is thriving in Nigeria. Researchers studying Africans’ presence in
China describe how the restrictive visa regime led to the rise of Chinese-run
semi-legal or illegal visa agency services, often conducted in conjunction with
state officials (Lan 2017). These agents help with visa renewals and arrange
invitation letters for African visa applicants. They have a strong network
with African visa entrepreneurs in big cities such as Lagos and Abuja. In
my case, I learned that agents in Lagos are well integrated into the Chinese
visa processing value chain. The visa processing framework recognise them
officially as brokers whose primary role is to interface between prospective
migrants and the Chinese embassy.
I had known the visa agents were a real option from the time I began
planning for my fieldwork. However, I was struggling with whether I could
trick myself into accepting an explanation that legitimises the option and
that, at the same time, renders insignificant the potential legal, ethical and
existential issues arising therefrom. Some of the questions I grappled with
were: how do I to justify, to myself, the payment of $2,000 for a service
that costs $50? Since the agents can only ‘assist’ with a business visa, am I a
businessman? The second question is especially puzzling because, to apply
for business visa, an applicant must prove that s/he is a businessperson. To
make a businessperson out of you and ‘package’ you for the embassy, the
agents must manufacture documents, especially introduction and invitation
letters authenticating an applicant’s status. The OILDAU from China must
also carry corresponding information. I was worried that mobility through
the informal visa market structure posed a threat to me directly. I was
concerned that the visa black market economy could potentially invalidate
my ‘authentic scholarly identity’.
The uncertainties surrounding my situation at the time, and the urgency
and responsibility to execute the project I had committed to, were being
processed as the institutional clock tick-tocked. To settle into the path I was
constrained to take, I convinced myself that I was only attempting to ‘move
within a moving environment’ (Vigh 2009). To proceed, I rationalised the
visa market as ‘visa informality’. That reconstruction made my decision
immediately relatable. As with Treiber (2014) who reasons that informality
in migration is a typical mode of action in ‘unprivileged migration’, I
resolved that having a business visa with the help of an agent was built into
China’s mobility system. It was my way of dealing with the dilemma of
exclusion, I concluded. That is, still in Treiber’s (2014:7) understanding,
I interpreted the informal visa market as something that keeps the world
accessible and manageable, that it is:
13
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
Difficult to classify informal praxis clearly into fraud, manipulation,
circumvention or exploitation…that informality has become a decisive
trait of unprivileged migration through our brutally asymmetric world
(Treiber 2014:21).
Once I decided to go with visa agents, plans were set in motion. Of all the
seven items listed as part of documentation, I submitted just three16 while
the agent sourced the rest. Incredibly, the ‘normal way’ of obtaining visa
took two years and failed; the ‘not-normal way’ produced a 30-day business
visa in under a month.
Uncertainty and Risk: Entering the Field and Staying Safe in
Guangzhou City
In the informal visa market, identity-switching and performance are critical
to successful mobility. For the interview at the Chinese Embassy in Lagos,
I was prepped by my agent to take on the identity of a businessman by
internalising a set of business-like questions and their answers. Surprisingly,
however, these questions were not revealed to me until the morning of the
interview. Until that morning, I did not also know that I was travelling
to Ningbo for business tourism along with four other sta members of
a company that I did not know I worked at. As a performer in a group
interview, I had to quickly learn who held which position. I learned fast but
it was dicult remembering who the Director of our ctitious company
was between the couple in my contingent.
Our agent was present all the way, pacing up and down the waiting area
and the interview hall. When our time for interview came, the agent handed
the documents to the consular officer who sat calmly behind a glass barrier.
Even though my queue was short with just four or five persons ahead of
me, it felt very long. My anxiety rose as I moved closer to the interviewer,
wondering, unsure and fearful, while struggling to stay alert long enough to
remember the information about our company and the staff members on
‘our’ business tour. I was surprised that the interview itself, which lasted for
about a minute, was casual and non-intrusive.17
Having collected my visa, I presumed I was free. However, the worst
part of the existential burden that follows from the condition of posing as a
businessperson lies at the port of entry in Guangzhou, China. The Baiyun
International Airport in Guangzhou is one of the busiest airports in the
world, with connections to many Chinese cities through commerce and
industry. Most Africans who arrived in China since the first decade of the
twenty-first century came to Guangzhou and entered through Baiyun.
14 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
I arrived at the airport around evening and the immigration desk was not
as intimidating as expected. Going through this checkpoint was smooth. I
picked my bags and changed some money from a desk to the left. A Nigerian
co-passenger, Adekunle,18 was by my side as we approached the exit area.
Then a customs officer nudged us to a secondary checking area. Once the
machine had scanned our bags again, we started to leave. Adekunle was
ahead of me by a few steps. In no time, another officer popped up and asked
where I came from, to which I responded: Nigeria. ‘So, you’re a Nigerian?’
he asked to confirm. I said ‘Yes’ again. From here on, the burden of an
appropriated identity confronted me.
To start, there were a series of accusatory probes: ‘You know you
Nigerians swallow drugs and bring into China?’ ‘Are you one of them?’
‘What do you have in your stomach?’ I said food. ‘Are you sure it is food
and not drugs?’ The officer continued with his interrogation. Noticing my
absence, Adekunle returned to look for me but the officer told him that I
was not his business. Later, he asked to know the purpose of my visit, and
I said business. On his assessment, I did not look the part. For one, my
outfit was casual: I wore a jacket over jeans with a T-shirt my girlfriend
had given me just two days before as a birthday gift. I wore eye glasses and
my moustache was long. My equally long hair was rough from the long
journey to Guangzhou. Everything about my appearance contradicted the
identity of a ‘businessman’. In his doubtfulness about my credentials as a
businessman, he pressed on with more accusatory questions as follows:19
Ocer: How much money do you have?
Me: $500
Ocer: You mean you are here on a business and all you have is $500?
Me: Well that is the cash I have. I have a USD debit card with more
money on it. I don’t have to carry cash.
Ocer: What if you want to use the card and it doesn’t work? What will
you do?
Me: Well you have ATM here, it should work. Do you want us to try?
Ocer: Well I don’t believe you. What kind of business do you do?
Me: I sell bags.
Ocer: So, you sell bag? Okay tell me how long you have been using this
bag – pointing to my XYZ branded travelling bag.
Me: It’s been a while.
Ocer: Tell me about the brand of the bag you’re carrying.
Me: I don’t know about this bag.
15
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
Ocer: You mean to tell me that you’re dealing with bags and you don’t
know about this brand? e brand is known all over the world!
I feel there’s something you’re not telling me; is there something
you’re not telling me?
Suddenly, the excitement I felt after passing the immigration desk vanished.
I was afraid and not being able to show my dread aggravated my anxiety.
Was this the end of my fieldwork? I broached the thought of being thrown
back on the plane as quickly as I had landed. I was prepared to confess, to
show the letter of introduction I obtained from my university as proof of my
real identity and actual purpose in China. I was busy in my thoughts while
remaining calm, giving up nothing. After some minutes of interrogation, I
told the officer that I had nothing more to say to him, when I, indeed, had
more to tell him.
However, the officer, in his impatience, was sure I had illicit items like
drugs tucked away inside my belly. He ordered me to present my luggage to
a bigger machine for further scans. While the scan was happening, I looked
away from the officer but kept him in sight. I was then guided to another
machine to do a full body scan. They needed to check my stomach, just to
be sure. Before I stepped in, I asked if I should take off my clothes, to which
the officer responded in the negative. By now, another officer had joined
us. With the bodily scrutiny complete, the second officer handed over my
passport and told me to go. The interrogating officer was no longer in sight.
The trip became smooth again. Adekunle was waiting for me outside the
airport with a cigarette between his fingers. The night was cold. Throughout
the bus ride, I stared at the second-hand bag I picked up in Lagos and
wondered how it had transformed into an albatross.
Academic Im(mobility) and ‘Africans in China’ Studies:
A Closing Reection
In a world deeply unequal, where geography, position, racism, stigmatisation,
othering and power relations determine and precondition the environment
surrounding who gets ‘out there’ to do ethnography, the charge against
‘armchair anthropologists’ (Howell 2017) demands critical and refreshed
scrutiny. e reality of borders in modern nation-states consigns to
oblivion the essentialised assumptions of academic freedom that the charge
of anti-armchair anthropology implies. We must acknowledge the global
racial and power structure by asking and critiquing how academic freedom
should be reckoned in the context of boundary and unequal mobility
freedoms and restrictions.
16 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
In this article, I have highlighted that in the pursuit of ethnography data,
certain structural factors and rules, both written and unwritten, are sources
of contradictions. African researchers are trapped in a world that is closing
as quickly as it is opening. The firm grip of states to control who is mobile
or immobile strengthens the position of agents operating in the informal
visa market. The structural constraints that precondition the extent of
researchers’ mobility sustain an economy that imbues the fieldwork process
with ‘existential threat’. I have shown that in the current order of ‘epistemic
things’, academics share important characteristics with migrants generally.
Precisely, I showed through my personal experience that academics are not
so different after all – or instead that some are indeed different! I maintain
that border constraints impact on the ability of African social scientists to
make contributions towards understanding the lives and implications of the
presence of Africans in the world.
With China’s growing wealth and increasing presence in global affairs,
the kinds of people moving to China from Africa have diversified. Migrant
flows have come to include trade migrants who hope to reap rewards from
China’s economic prosperity and advanced commodity manufacture.
Even more interesting are the economic migrants who have constructed
and pursued what some have called ‘China Dream’ (Marfaing 2019). This
brings more than transient African people; it is also producing a distinctive
presence that is rapidly altering and transforming the outlook of the cities
that Africans have moved to. In Guangzhou where the visibility of Africans
is high, the people in the streets exhibit the extra dimension of Africa’s
blackness. Much like the state, local Chinese residents are noticing, and
constructions and narratives of invasion are circulating with the worst
forms surfacing online among Chinese netizens (Pfafman, Carpenter
& Tang 2015; Wing-Fai 2015; Cheng 2011).20 Offline, the problem of
criminality fuels animosity towards specific African groups (Pang & Yuan
2013) despite the dynamic closeness that is occurring through work and
interracial marriage.
As part of the African diasporisation and twenty-first century histories
are constructed in China and other Asian countries, more issues will arise.
Diasporas of Africans are part of the knowledge realm with which African
researchers must engage. As one scholar observes, African studies and
diaspora studies must be integrated with one another (Busia 2006). This view
anticipates the need for African researchers to show an interest in, and do
active research on, African diasporas, including those currently in formation
in Asia. ‘Africans in China’ studies must also be considered an arm of Africa’s
historical formation, linked to past and future changes. In short, the presence
17
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
of Africans in China is an aspect of a history-making process. This endeavour
should involve researchers working from everywhere, not only those privileged
by global racial hierarchies or geographies of visa power which place African
intellectuals at the bottom of the global knowledge system.
‘Africans in China’ is a critical part of Africa’s postcolonial decolonisation
project, where knowledge of Africa is co-produced, and debated through
multi-perspectival lenses. Efforts should be, from the beginning, directed
at guarding against African intellectuals becoming reactionaries against
knowledges on Africa(ns) in China in the future. This is because, once
documented, transmitted, reproduced, and institutionalised, the knowledge
so produced becomes a power unto itself, which will require equal or
more superior and aggressive knowledge-power to dethrone. This is not a
pessimistic view of Africa’s future as potential knowledge producer. Rather it
anticipates that in the future, dissipating intellectual energies on reactionary
epistemologies will be a waste, especially when opportunities exist in the
present to co-produce knowledge. Moreover, the task of centring academic
mobility in Africa-China strategic relations also offers an opportunity
to reverse the dominance of the Western episteme in conditioning what
Africa knows about China and other Asian countries. It would serve similar
purposes in respect of what Africa/Africans knows about itself/themselves
in Asia. So, why wait?
In all of this, African states must be responsible and responsive by
funding graduate students and programmes focused on the study of Africans
in the world.21 A concerted effort is needed to ensure that the funding of
higher education is not outsourced as has been done for many decades.
This step is critical in reducing the academic and epistemic dependency
of the continent. Furthermore, there is a need to broaden the scope and
content of academic freedom to accommodate academic mobility. The
traditional view limited academic freedom to the freedom of intellectuals
and educational institutions from state repression, university closures,
thuggery, and ideological confinements (Mkandawire 1997). To advance the
integration of academic mobility into academic freedom, there should be an
acknowledgement that Africans in the world beyond the African continent
are a part of the story of Africa. We must also agree that the translation of the
stories into knowledge of Africa(ns) must involve the active participation of
African researchers, especially those based in African universities.22 Finally,
ensuring that African scholarship should not be silenced, as Mkandawire
(1997) worries, requires a continent-wide commitment to opening the
world to African scholars and researchers at all levels through advocacy,
collaboration and social and political engagements. ‘Knowing the world’, an
18 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
attitude which Africa must cultivate to meaningfully engage in the rapidly
transforming global society, demands being out there in that same world.
Academic mobility is central to achieving this.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in
Africa (CODESRIA) for supporting my participation at the 15th General
Assembly of CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal, from December 17 to 21, 2018,
where I rst read this paper. Facilitators and participants at the summer
school, eorising from the Global South: African and Arab Imaginaries
and Circulations at the American University in Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
2019, also provided feedback that improved the manuscript. e doctoral
research upon which the experience documented here received funding
from CODESRIA; the Postgraduate College, University of Ibadan, Nigeria;
the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) and
the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS)/African Humanities
Program (AHP) Fellowship.
Notes
1. Only eight of the total number of respondents (n=42) were Africans. One
respondent called for ‘thoughtfulness around the visa challenges facing people
from African countries…[,] that this is an impediment to the quality of research
to Africa-China studies’ (Lu and Huang, 2018:4).
2. is refers simply to (in)ability or (in)capability to move freely across national
borders in pursuit of intellectual or scholarly engagements such as conferences,
collaborative meetings and to conduct ethnographic eldwork. In the case
of African researchers, being able to move cross-continentally is emphasised.
‘Academic (im)mobility’ in this article should be dierentiated from other uses
of the term, e.g. Sivak and Yudkevich (2015) where it is used as ‘academic in-
breeding’ (see Dutton 1980).
3. is reects a pre-Covid-19 condition of the world. e Covid-19 pandemic
will likely worsen the situation and further impose more immobilities on African
migrants. With the adoption of vaccine certicates in the European Union and
the possibility that vaccination in many African countries will take several years
to reach the mass of the population, African migrants in general and scholars
in particular will likely remain grounded in place for much longer than their
counterparts in more economically advanced societies.
4. See, for example, Canadian Association of African Studies (2018) and
Grounds (2019)
5. Britz and Ponelis (2012) interestingly reference a key international instrument
that seeks to arm the right to pursue intellectual activities without hinder-
19
Adebayo: Academic (Im)mobility and Knowledge Production on Africans in China
ance – the Kampala Declaration in 1990. At the summit where the Kampala
Declaration was agreed and in similar meetings, academic (im)mobility was
framed as an impediment to academic freedom of movement (p. 471).
6. Prior to my research on Nigerians in Guangzhou, two (that I know of) PhD-
level ethnographic research projects were conducted outside Nigeria, all within
West Africa. e longstanding ECOWAS agreement guarantees the free move-
ment of citizens between member states within the sub-region and visas are not
required for the researchers to move within the sub-region.
7. I was awarded the Postgraduate School Scholarship Scheme from the Post-
graduate School of the University of Ibadan. e award covers a substantial
part of tuition fees and gives a monthly stipend of approximately $270
(July 2014 rate).
8. See http://lagos.china-consulate.org/eng/lszj/zgqz/t1090583.htm, accessed 15
May, 2015.
9. Approximately $25,000 at the 2015 exchange rate.
10. One was Swiss and the other a Nigerian professor. e Nigerian professor did
not have a direct link to China but he recommended an American colleague
with decades of research collaboration with a Chinese university.
11. For item number 6 (bank statement), I approached senior scholars and friends to
raise the needed cash to ‘beef up’ my account. Personally, I converted US dollars
from my account to Naira to further jack up the deposit, since, according to visa
agents, the Chinese consular ocers want to see the Naira not the US dollars.
12. In one case, after series of exchanges and documentation from August 8 to
November 30, 2016, I received the following response: ‘Hello XYZ, How
are you recently? ank you for your care. Sorry, I must tell you a bad news.
Because of limits of China’s government policy to Nigeria, stas in the oce
cannot give you a visa. I hope your things is OK. Sorry [crying emoji]. Best
regards, ABC (Personal email correspondence, November 30, 2016)
13. I arrived in Guangzhou to nd that not considering this option had been wise. A
number of Nigerians in the city told me that enrolling for Chinese language pro-
grammes is tough. Many Chinese universities in Guangzhou are realising that some
Nigerians enrol in the programmes to obtain long-term visas that let them stay in the
city while mainly doing business without much hassle from the security agencies.
14. An assistant was assigned to plough through all active MOU with Chinese
schools. e status of a number of MOUs could not be determined by the OIP.
15. Approximately $5,000 based on the mid-year 2016 conversion rate.
16. Passport photo, international passport and personal bank statement.
17. I went through this routine a second time to nalise my eldwork. is time,
however, my agent said I had a registered company named ‘XYZ International’
and I was visiting China as the Director to make business contacts. So, I inter-
viewed as an individual applicant.
20 JHEA/RESA Vol. 18, No. 1, 2020
18. Not his real name.
19. Based on memory recall after I left the airport.
20. is reality is manifested in the most alarming form with the outbreak of Co-
vid-19 in China. See Africans in China Face Evictions, Discrimination – Report
(https://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00072795.html); Will African
Migration to China Ever Be the Same Again? (https://allafrica.com/view/group/
main/main/id/00072993.html). 4 June 2021.
21. While African states have damaged African higher education through the infu-
sion of destructive neo-liberal ideas and policies, their role and participation
remains crucial in facilitating mobility-linked academic freedom in Africa.
22. is “going out” into the world should not be limited to the study of African
diaspora alone. African researchers with an interest in learning about other
societies should also be able to do so without the hindrances of borders, race,
passports, nationality and other such issues. I thank the peer reviewer for raising
this important point.
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