Racial Formation: Chinese-African Encounters in Guangzhou, China

Department of Sociology speaker series.

Unlike many countries in the West, China has never been a nation of immigrants.  Human movements out of or into China has been strictly controlled. In the past two decades, however, major capital cities have witnessed the growing presence of international migrants. In Guangzhou, there has been a rapid increase of African migrants since the late 1990s. These newcomers are independent merchants and traders doing business with local Chinese merchants and small business owners. They do not live in upscale quarters reserved for foreigners but in visible African enclaves or neighborhoods in which foreigners and Chinese interact on a daily basis. The encounter of a racially different group of foreigners at the local level offers an opportunity for exploring the conceptions of race beyond the classic black-white paradigm. This study focuses on exploring interracial dynamics and the racial attitudes via surveys, in-depth interviews, and field observations. Data analysis is still ongoing.

About the speaker

Min ZHOU, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology & Asian American Studies and Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in US-China Relations and Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. She is also the Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor at Sun Yat-Sen University, China. Her main areas of research are in international migration and immigrant incorporation, transnationalism, Chinese Diaspora, race and ethnicity, and the sociology of Asian America.