Michal Lyons's research while affiliated with London South Bank University and other places
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Publications (18)
This article analyzes the value chain for Chinese manufactured goods such as garments and textiles sold in sub-Saharan Africa. It explores the opportunities for Africans with small, private businesses in the export trade from China, the potential for long-term business development, and how strategies of engagement have changed over time. It finds t...
The World Bank's Doing Business' reforms were originally expected to help the growth and formalisation of SMEs and micro enterprises. The expectations that reforms would support the growth and development of SMEs were challenged by scholars, but the reforms' impact on the micro enterprises of the poor has received little scholarly attention. Drawin...
This article analyzes the value chain for Chinese manufactured goods such as garments and textiles sold in sub-Saharan Africa. It explores the opportunities for Africans with small, private businesses in the export trade from China, the potential for long-term business development, and how strategies of engagement have changed over time. It finds t...
Globalisation, liberalisation and urbanisation have contributed to a rapid growth of urban informal economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Commerce has become a dominant feature of national economies, and street vending has become a prime source of employment for poor urban dwellers, yet most work illegally, and evictions and harassment are common. The p...
A growing literature studies the Chinese diasporas in Africa, involved in the import and distribution of manufactured goods across the continent, identifying their economic and social strategies and their interactions with African urban and political life. In contrast, the counter-flow of African private traders to China has been relatively little...
Abstract The recent rise of African communities in Guangzhou has been widely noted. To understand this ‘Chocolate City,’ with a series of field surveys in 2006-2010, we examine its different development stages and shed particular light upon its internal and external linkages. Three modalities: the emerging enclave, the prosperous enclave and the co...
Our review of post-disaster reconstruction in 10 countries has demonstrated some of the weaknesses in currently dominant approaches, e.g. donor-driven reconstruction and owner-driven reconstruction. They have often been top-down and exclusionary, focusing on people with existing title to land and housing, and failing to reach the marginalized, espe...
This short piece argues that a series of progressive developments in our understanding of aid after disasters, and how we should seek to deliver and manage it, calls for a review of accountability systems in the sector.
Summary This paper addresses the immediate impacts of the China-Africa trade on Africa's informal traders and its longer term impact on urban poverty, based on a comparison of the major cities of two West African countries and drawing on semi-structured interviews with traders and on schedule-based interviews with key informants in government, busi...
The well-documented weaknesses of structural adjustment policies have led to a reconceptualisation of the World Bank's approach to neo-liberal reforms. The 'Doing Business' reforms aim to foster a better climate for business in a number of ways. The main policy documents reject interventions targeted at specific groups but, although they identify i...
As informal commerce has grown to become the lifeblood of African cities, street trade---among the largest sub-groups in the informal economy---has become a visible but contested domain. Yet the increase in street traders has not been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in their status as citizens or in their political influence. The paper f...
When a dominant group yields space to the 'other', boundaries are redrawn in urban space or time. However, as migration increases, the 'other' becomes increasingly diverse. Through a study of the Omonia area of Athens, this article addresses two gaps at the intersection of urban and migration studies: (How) is spatial differentiation constructed an...
In recent years, China's major trading cities have witnessed rapid social, cultural and physical change which has accompanied the country's boom in manufacturing and exports. A small but increasingly significant element of this growth has been the China-Africa trade in small-scale manufactured goods. The opening of China's economy has created new s...
In the context of social, economic and political change, and of a continuing fall in the real cost of travel, temporary migrations to London, as to other major cities in the global North, have become increasingly common. Indeed, some have speculated that they may come to replace permanent migrations. This trend has intersected with 'informalization...
Urban growth has been accompanied by the development of bimodal labour markets and increasing inequalities in both North and South. In Southern cities, many of the poor have turned to the informal sector, in particular to street trade. This has resulted in a multiplicity of urban conflicts and has led to pressure on urban managers to undertake form...
The poverty and dramatic alteration in geographical composition of African cities have been associated with rapid urbanisation, the growth of the informal economy and migration. The latter has separated individuals from long-established social and kinship networks, and from familiar livelihood strategies. The sustainable livelihoods approach views...
Citations
... Instead, the state ushered international humanitarian agencies to participate in the crafting of a recovery plan similar to the 'build back better' approach to Indian Ocean tsunami disaster recovery from 2006 (cf. Lyons, Schilderman, and Saunders, 2010). One-third of the landless displaced population were allowed to return and live in new housing built in some parts of the devastated zone. ...
... 1.4 the informal city: economy, supply chain, and construction process The housing delivery sector can act as a possible engine to move towards a more inclusive and virtuous economy [33]- [35], as shown in the central position acquired by housing in the New Urban Agenda as well as in diverse assessments carried out worldwide [36]- [38]. It is known that, while unemployment and poverty are a major local issue, the majority of informal dwellers earn their living from informal activities located in the proximity of their settlements [39]- [42]. ...
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... The term is also now used to refer to the international investment climate for private sector development, meaning global trade and investment regimes and the macroeconomic environment (ODA, 2018). Lyons (2014) defines investment climate for private sector as 'the conditions necessary for domestic business and entrepreneurs to operate and the conditions that facilitate international trade and private investment into a country'. This definition by Lyon (2014) is contestable as there also unfordable conditions to the growth of the firm. ...
![[object Object]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/621154012246023-1525106065289_Q64/Colman-Msoka.jpg)
... There are many enclaves of African people in Guangzhou to guarantee their daily life, and they will also find jobs or start businesses through these channels. However, due to the excessive number of Africans, some enclaves become problematic, such as illegal residence and illegal work [8]. Nevertheless, these enclaves overall have a positive impact on the economy of Guangzhou. ...
Reference: The Impacts of the Africans in Guangzhou
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... A recent estimate indicates that as many as 22,000 Africans may be residing in Guangzhou city alone (Haugen, 2019), the majority of them being men who engage in trade (Bodomo & Pajancic, 2015;Tu Huynh, 2015). The desire of these Africans to participate in China's cheap manufacturing economy through transnational trade is no doubt linked to the broader expansion and solidification of China's economic and political relations with African countries (Braun & Haugen, 2021;Lyons et al., 2013;Mathews & Yang, 2012;Park, 2009;Pieke, 2011;Yang & Altman, 2011). ...
... This indicates the humble attitude of the study participants, given the income inequalities between informal and formal workers. Also, besides supporting themselves and dependents, a number of studies show that street traders from urban areas send part of their earnings to support relatives and families in poor rural or suburban areas (Lyons et al. 2012;Lyons et al. 2014;Reid et al. 2010). Also, informal workers operate with no job security, healthcare or social security packages or plans that are typical in the formal economy. ...
... Africa is well known for its rich natural resources (Drummond & Liu, 2015;Habiyaremye, 2016;Lyons, Brown, & Li, 2013) which are essential in any country which wants to sustain their economy especially when it is mostly built around high manufacturing activities. Over the past years, the continent has been seen as the source of cheap raw materials for production which ended up hurting its industry as gains were suppressed by the unfavorable trade terms. ...
... Migration studies have undergone what may be referred to as a 'temporal turn' in the past two decades (Cwerner, 2001;Gabaccia, 2014;Page et al., 2017), where a renewed interest in the role of time and temporalities has become mainstream. Such interest in the temporal dimensions of migration has led to work on waiting, temporariness and liminality (Noussia & Lyons, 2009;Vaughn et al., 2020), has continued longstanding demographic traditions of the analysis of generations, cohorts and life-cycle stages (see, e.g., and emphasised the importance of acknowledging the roles of the past, present and the future in efforts to understand migration processes. The passage of time and changing life-cycle stages affect individuals' and families' perspectives, showing future choices in a new light in which a cost-benefit analysis may be evaluated differently from one decade to another. ...
... Informality and the sociocultural embeddedness of economic activities in marketplaces have traditionally been the focus of studies conducted in the global South (e.g. Hart, 1973;Clark, 1988;Lyons and Snoxell, 2005;Meagher, 2010). Meanwhile, similar dynamics among traders in the global North have received relatively little attention (although, see Boels, 2014;Ram et al., 2017;Devlin, 2018;Clough Marinaro, 2019). ...
... 15 Nonetheless, company profits became increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of the high price of black oil for the company's power-generating plants and the increasing presence of imported Chinese textiles. 16 By the late 1990s, Chinese textile companies had set up offices in Lagos and Kano, while Nigerian traders and businessmen set up offices in Guangzhou, China (Bodomo 2012;Haugen 2012;Lyons et al. 2008;Renne 2015). While UNT Plc mills were forced to stop production in October 2007, the company managed to pay entitlements to all their laid-off workers, as was noted in the 2007 annual report: 'The year 2007 witnessed effective handling of industrial relations matters. ...
