Chinese factor in the space, place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Standard
Chinese factor in the space, place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana. / Giese, Karsten; Thiel, Alena.
I: Social and Cultural Geography, Bind 16, Nr. 4, 19.05.2015, s. 444-464.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Chinese factor in the space, place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana
AU - Giese, Karsten
AU - Thiel, Alena
N1 - Funding Information: 4. Research for this publication was undertaken as part of the larger project ‘Entrepreneurial Chinese Migrants and Petty African Entrepreneurs – Local Impacts of Interaction in Urban West Africa’ funded by the DFG Priority Programme 1448 ‘Adaptation and Creativity in Africa’ and conducted by the two authors and Laurence Marfaing. Publisher Copyright: ©2015, Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2015/5/19
Y1 - 2015/5/19
N2 - Migrating from northern Ghana to the coastal capital Accra in search of work, female head porters (‘kayayei’) find themselves in social structures and spatial orders that are imbued with various relations of seniority and power that constrain newcomers' entrepreneurial options. Yet, with the recent arrival of Chinese entrepreneurs in the social arena of Accra's marketplace, these power relations and gate-keeping mechanisms have begun to change. In this article, we analyse how female head porters perceive and appropriate the opportunities that arise as a result of the Chinese being seen by both they themselves and others as outsiders to Ghanaian society. By unintentionally enabling head-load carriers to extend their actual and symbolic claims to spatial realms that they were previously excluded from, the Chinese traders are facilitating head porters' expanded role within the social construction of place and space in Ghana's main urban market centre. They are therefore altering the patterns of everyday interactions between these head-load carriers and their environment.
AB - Migrating from northern Ghana to the coastal capital Accra in search of work, female head porters (‘kayayei’) find themselves in social structures and spatial orders that are imbued with various relations of seniority and power that constrain newcomers' entrepreneurial options. Yet, with the recent arrival of Chinese entrepreneurs in the social arena of Accra's marketplace, these power relations and gate-keeping mechanisms have begun to change. In this article, we analyse how female head porters perceive and appropriate the opportunities that arise as a result of the Chinese being seen by both they themselves and others as outsiders to Ghanaian society. By unintentionally enabling head-load carriers to extend their actual and symbolic claims to spatial realms that they were previously excluded from, the Chinese traders are facilitating head porters' expanded role within the social construction of place and space in Ghana's main urban market centre. They are therefore altering the patterns of everyday interactions between these head-load carriers and their environment.
KW - China–Africa relations
KW - gender
KW - head porters (‘kayayei’)
KW - place
KW - spatial orders
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84926109457&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14649365.2014.998266
DO - 10.1080/14649365.2014.998266
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84926109457
VL - 16
SP - 444
EP - 464
JO - Social & Cultural Geography
JF - Social & Cultural Geography
SN - 1464-9365
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 324834673