573767

research-article2015

ICS0010.1177/1367877915573767International Journal of Cultural StudiesCastillo

International Journal of Cultural Studies

120
The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1367877915573767
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Article

Homing Guangzhou:
Emplacement, belonging
and precarity among
Africans in China
Roberto Castillo

The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Abstract
Over the last decade, countless Africans have been moving between China and Africa. While
Africans in Guangzhou have been generally portrayed as a wave of immigrant traders, they
arrive in China for myriad reasons, occupy multiple (usually transient) emplacements, and engage
in diverse activities. By following the stories and insights of two Nigerian community leaders, this
article explores the place-making processes through which individuals and collectives negotiate
their everyday lives in Guangzhou under conditions of uncertainty. Throughout the article, I
suggest that despite different trajectories and emplacements, precarity is a common thread
running through most accounts of Africans in the city. While sometimes paralysing, I argue that
this precarity functions as a trigger encouraging individuals to develop structures of solidarity
and networks of support (i.e. sporting clubs and community offices), which are crucial sites for
individual and collective attempts to feel at home while on the move in China.

Keywords
Africans in China, belonging, emplacement, Guangzhou, home, homing, Nigerians, place-making,
precarity, transiency

The number of Africans sojourning, recurrently visiting and/or living in Guangzhou

since the early 2000s has no parallel in the history of the region.1 There are no conclusive
figures on the size of the population; however, different estimates range from 1500 to
over 20,000 (see Bodomo, 2010; Li etal., 2008).2 While significant efforts have been
Corresponding author:
Roberto Castillo, African Studies, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Email: rocas@hku.hk

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International Journal of Cultural Studies

made to define the types and origins of individuals in the city (Bodomo, 2012; Li etal.,
2012; Zhang, 2008), extant research has tended to represent Africans as a mass of traders
(see Bertoncelo and Bredeloup, 2007; Bredeloup, 2012; Haugen, 2011; Mathews and
Yang, 2012; Muller and Rainer, 2013) and to conflate their presence in the region with a
wave of immigration (see Haugen, 2012; Lan, 2014). Drawing on my fieldwork in
Guangzhou (conducted between 2011 and 2014), I contend that these representations fail
to account for the complexities associated with the multiple trajectories, stories and
mobilities of individuals in the city. Indeed, if one considers the diverse rationales behind
the multiple forms of mobility that drive individuals into transnational movement/activities between Africa and China, then a different perspective emerges: one in which
Africans from diverse walks of life arrive in Guangzhou for myriad reasons, and then
subsequently occupy various (usually transient) emplacements. Taking these multiple
emplacements and trajectories into consideration leads to a more thorough understanding of the dynamics informing place-making processes and the experiences of Africans
in the city, and renders representations of the African presence in the region as a wave of
immigration problematic. While I suggest that the immigrants label should be avoided,
it is in no way my intention to characterize these mobile subjects as having no connection
to place. Indeed, through ethnographic analysis and the deployment of analytical constructs, I endeavour to describe and discuss how individuals on the move attempt to
home themselves while navigating through their transnational journeys.
Most migration-related literature on place-making has focused on the ways in which
immigrants forge collective identities when facing discrimination or poverty in a host
society (Gill, 2010) less effort has been directed towards assessing how people moving
in transnational circuits might (or might fail to) feel at home throughout their journeys.
This article is an attempt to bridge this gap by bringing together the place-making strategies and the structures of feeling that intersect in the notion of home. Following Ahmed
(2000), I contend that to better understand the ways in which people on the move structure feelings of at-homeness, we need to pay closer attention to the affective, material
and symbolic processes through which place-making and homing during transnational
journeys occur. Home, I argue, is not necessarily a place to go back to. It can be a process and a feeling (an embodied experience) that can be (re)produced while on the move,
and emplaced in several locations. Moreover, I maintain that under certain modes of
transnational movement, home can be emplaced within transiency, and it is by using
this notion of emplacement within transiency that I highlight how individuals are differently emplaced and how they often attempt to (re)produce a feeling of being at home
while on the move. I do this by following the stories and insights of two Nigerian community leaders, Tony Ekai and Ojukwu Emma, and by exploring some of the strategies
that individuals and collectives employ to negotiate their everyday lives in Guangzhou
under conditions of transiency and precarity.
As in many cases of transnational mobility,3 the precarity experienced by most
Africans in Guangzhou is predicated on economic uncertainty; in this particular case,
however, the precarity is heightened by the logics of surveillance and control imposed on
populations by the Chinese state. While sometimes paralysing, precarity can, nonetheless, function as a trigger encouraging individuals to develop structures of solidarity and
networks of support. These networks, structured by (and structuring) the emergence of

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Castillo

grassroots forms of organization (i.e. sporting clubs and community offices) are crucial
sites for individual and collective attempts to feel at home in Guangzhou. Throughout
this article, these attempts to (re)create a measure of stability, familiarity and security
under conditions of transiency, migrancy and precarity are referred to as precarious
homing. As I will show, precarious homing is intrinsically connected to the notion of
emplacement within transiency. This connection not only helps to elucidate the conditions under which individuals are emplaced while on the move but also makes their
everyday efforts to (re)create a sense of being at home clear. Indeed, through particular
place-making practices and homing projects some Africans have managed to generate
the necessary spaces where senses of belonging to communities emerge.

Looking for greener pastures in southern China

A trip to a secret soccer pitch
On a Saturday morning in mid 2013, I waited for Tony Ekai, a prominent member of
Guangzhous Nigerian community, in front of Canaan Wholesale Clothing Market in the
area of Guangyuan West Road. For many Nigerians in Guangzhou, Canaan is a landmark. Almost a decade ago, it became the first hub of Nigerian and Ghanaian traders in
the city. Nowadays, most of the stores in several of Guangyuan West Roads wholesale
markets are Nigerian-run. At around 11, Tony arrived in his new Korean SUV. With an
eclectic mix of Nigerian pop and Americana blaring on the stereo, Tony drove me out to
what he had previously referred to as an undisclosed location a somewhat lonely
patch of grass serving as a soccer pitch in the northern outskirts of the city. We [Nigerians]
have been coming here for 16 years, Tony said. Everybody is welcome on the pitch, but
we keep the location private. We are safe here. Nobody harasses us and the police never
come. It is there that Tony and the coach, Ken O, try out new players and select the most
talented ones to play for the team they manage Owners FC the first African club to
have joined Guangzhous International Premier League. While some of the players on
the field have professional experience, others are newcomers to the sport. Training is an
opportunity to play some soccer, meet people, and make friends, Tony explained. And
if the players make it to the team, they might get exposure to Chinese recruiting agents.
Out on the pitch that day, Ken was drilling some 15 players to do a combination of sprints
and push-ups, while another 10 were laid out among the sports bags and sneakers in the
shade behind one of the goal posts (Figure 1). Although it was the tail end of summer, the
sun was still scorching. In addition to the players, a 3-year-old was kicking a ball around.
With play at the other end of the pitch, the goalkeeper turned and asked sternly for the
half-Nigerian, half-Chinese child to show his passport and visa. Everyone laughed.
There are many young Nigerians here without valid visas, Tony said, explaining the
joke. There may be hundreds only in Guangzhou. Indeed, at that days training session,
only five people had valid visas the rest were overstayers.
The group on the pitch could be a representative sample of Nigerians and, to some
extent, other African nationalities in the city. By focusing on personal stories and mobilities, for instance, it is possible to identify three main trajectories: those who attempt to live
in Guangzhou; those who recurrently visit the city; and those who pass through it (this

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