Since 1960s, the flow of Chinese migrants to Africa has emerged as one part of South-South migration corridors, especially after 2000, more and more Chinese have started to travel to African countries to pursue their livelihood opportunities, and they engaged in working in trade, infrastructure, mining, agriculture, etc. Although there is no available data to show how many Chinese are migrating to African countries due to the large number and be lack of concrete statistic method, yet the phenomenon of Chinese appearance in Africa has attracted attentions from many sides - locally and internationally, government, society and academia, and so on. For instance, the flow of Chinese miners to Ghana triggered a heated discussion on media. Chinese migrants in Africa has become a social issue for governments, researchers, journalists to study and pay attention.

On the other hand, since 1990s, a large number of Africans rushed into China for studying, tour and mostly for trade. Some of them travel between China and Africa continent; some of them have been staying in China for long term. Yet the same to Chinese migrants in Africa, it is difficult to calculate how many Africans in China on earth, but this shows the new features of flow of migrants. Based on the reality, the flow of Chinese migrants in Africa and African migrants in China have called attention and even challenge for government to manage them and for locals to accept them. Yet, academic studies on the group are insufficient. As part of South-South migration, it shows differences to migration from south to north, and similarities to migration between other southern countries. Especially the following issues are emerging and need to be explored: gender issues, resource flows and poverty and income inequality issues.

Work packages

WP1: Gender inequality and South-South migration

WP3: Poverty and income inequalities

WP6: Resource flows: finance, trade and knowledge

Research Questions

  1. How gender and gender inequalities influence and change migration opportunities and outcomes, and how the existence, and consequences, of gender inequalities affect access to rights and resources in origin and destination countries?
  2. How does migration contribute or not contribute to the migrants and destination families, to what extent and why?
  3. What are the resources under the China-Ghana migration and how these resources flow?
  4. How does the migration affect and reconstruct the social, economic and gender relations in the left-behind families?
  5. How does the migration contribute to reduce the inequalities and development of economic, social and gender relations in sending and receiving countries?