"If You Greet Them, They Ignore You": Chinese Migrants, (Refused) Greetings, and the Inter-personal Ethics of Global Inequality in Tanzania

Sheridan, Derek

doi:10.1353/anq.2018.0007

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…there was much greater risk for misunderstanding. This is not only because the two parties may have had diverging expectations of how courtesy or respect should be conveyed in speech (Sheridan 2018 (Whyte 2002: 176). This is how she understands her research interlocutors as handling people who they suspect may be "agents of misfortune" or "sources of affliction" (ibid.)…”

Section: Witchcraft Indirectness and Subjunctivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Kufala! Translating witchcraft in an Angolan–Chinese labor dispute

Schmitz

2020

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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Drawing on fieldwork conducted at a Chinese state-owned enterprise brought to Angola in the postwar reconstruction boom, this article devotes sustained attention to a labor dispute between an Angolan laid-off worker and his former Chinese employers. Called upon to interpret between the worker and his bosses, neither of whom spoke directly or transparently, the ethnographer found herself implicated in a prolonged negotiation of attempted kindness and unavoidable cruelty. Through repeated translations and circumlocutions, both parties attempted to preserve sociality despite being structurally positioned in an exploitative relationship. Translating this exchange into an ethnographic narrative, this paper explores how the indirectness both of speech and of witchcraft failed as social relations broke down.

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Section: Witchcraft Indirectness and Subjunctivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Kufala! Translating witchcraft in an Angolan–Chinese labor dispute

Schmitz

2020

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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“…While most Zimbabwean employees find the Chinese unfriendly and lacking the ability to show affection, Chinese employers find Zimbabweans' directness (e.g., demanding a higher salary or disobeying an order they don't agree with) to be abrupt and rude. I found my ethnographic data often shared similarities or overlapped with other case studies conducted in Africa (Men 2014;Sheridan 2018;Sun 2017;Wu 2014;Zi 2017 In the latter chapter, I emphasized conflicts between Chinese employers and employees to highlight the fact that there will always be conflicts in any employer- etiquette. This is where the Chinese employees have an advantage over the Zimbabwean employees, as they are able to get along better with Chinese employers.…”

Section: Intra-migrant Economy: Racialized Labour Marketmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…I am unable to answer her question because this topic did not come up in my conversations with Zimbabwean interlocutors, and I do not wish to overinterpret their answers for them. Instead, I look at two other case studies in a similar context (Sheridan 2018;Wu 2014) and compare and contrast their findings with my own ethnographic data.…”

Section: Begging or Reciprocity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Derek Sheridan (2018) observed that Chinese employers were often surprised to hear when Tanzanian customers, strangers, and employees made frequent requests for items such as for water, cigarettes, or other gifts. On top of their experiences of petty extortion in Tanzania, Sheridan's Chinese interlocutors came to the conclusion that "'begging' was a generalized 'African' way of being" (2018,252).…”

Section: Begging or Reciprocity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though it is only barely twenty years old but highly complex. What is noticeable about migration between Africa and China in both directions is that the migrants have several predominant characteristics: high cross-border mobility, little capital, limited resources, a desire to find trading opportunities and better livelihoods, and a strong entrepreneurial motivation (Bodomo 2012(Bodomo , 2018Castillo 2014;Chen 2013;Huang 2018;Lan 2016;Park and Chen 2009;Park and Huynh 2010;Sheridan 2018;Wu 2014;Zi 2017). While these factors have had a critical role in shaping the current "South-South" trend of migration, as argued in Chapter II, an underexamined but important social enablers of these continued migratory flows are actually the actors and their entrepreneurial actions that help migrant networks develop and employment opportunities grow in their host countries (Bodomo 2018;Krissman 2005).…”

Section: Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intra-Migrant Economy: Chinese Restaurant Entrepreneurship and Zimbabwean Migrant Workers In South Africa

Liu¹

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South Africa is "home" to the two largest populations of foreign nationals on the African continent. Its Chinese population numbers at least 300,000, and its Zimbabwean population, the largest outside of Zimbabwe, numbers at least one million. Many of these migrants end up working in Chinese restaurants as this is, by and large, a low-wage, lowskill, and low-barrier-to-entry sector. Based on original ethnographic research conducted in Johannesburg for fourteen months, this dissertation explores the cultural politics of diasporic entrepreneurs and migrant labourers, what I call the "intra-migrant economy," among everyday racialized insecurities in urban South Africa. I use the term "intramigrant economy" to refer to the employment of one or more group of migrants by another group of migrants as an economic strategy outside the mainstream labour market. With little capital, Chinese restaurant owners are able to maximize profit through cheap Zimbabwean labourers, while Zimbabweans can easily obtain jobs without proper procedure or formal training. Through exploring the structure of this sector, and the complex economic realities of and working relationships between Chinese and Zimbabwean migrants, I examine how the migrant and economic flows are negotiated and localized in South Africa's market, which also provides a concrete case study of intercultural (mis)communication.Anthropologists have paid attention to how economic practices are intertwined and embedded in historical, political, and cultural systems. This dissertation suggests that not only are these factors intertwined but they also reinforce each other. The intramigrant economy is thus more than a story about migrants' economic hardships; it is also a reflection on two migrant groups who are linguistically and culturally different, the social structures that create their exploitation, and how they construct informal labour relations and cope with wider forms of uncertainty in one of the most notably racialized states in history. ACKNOWLDEGEMENTFirst and foremost, I would like to thank my research participants for telling me their stories and sharing their restaurant life with me. I am especially grateful for those who fed me with their homemade food, invited me to their homes, gave me a ride when my car broken down, introduced me to more research participants, and shared their hopes and fears with me.

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China–Africa skills transfer through overseas economic and trade cooperation zones

Fei

2023

J of Intl Development

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This paper investigates the employment patterns, training activities, and skills development outcomes of China's Overseas Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones (OETCZs) in Africa. Drawing upon ethnographic field research and a workers' opinion survey in Ethiopia's Eastern Industrial Zone (EIZ), it answers two questions: How well has intergovernmental collaboration on OETCZs been translated into training opportunities for local workers? What are local workers' perceptions and evaluations of the potentials and constraints of skills development in Chinese companies? Analyses based on field observations and regression models indicate that workers' demographic backgrounds, employment sector, and the peculiarities of Chinese workplaces are important factors to understand the skills development outcomes in Chinese OETCZs.

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"If You Greet Them, They Ignore You": Chinese Migrants, (Refused) Greetings, and the Inter-personal Ethics of Global Inequality in Tanzania

Cited by 18 publications

References 23 publications

Kufala! Translating witchcraft in an Angolan–Chinese labor dispute

Kufala! Translating witchcraft in an Angolan–Chinese labor dispute

Intra-Migrant Economy: Chinese Restaurant Entrepreneurship and Zimbabwean Migrant Workers In South Africa

China–Africa skills transfer through overseas economic and trade cooperation zones

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