‘Same skin, but not the same habits’

‘Paradoxically, the 2012 demonstrations were a turning point’, Dieng, the leader of the Senegalese community told me, in French, during one of our meetings. ‘That was the moment in which we, as community representatives, realised that local authorities were taking us seriously. Now, they contact us to solve all kinds of problems’. Dieng arrived in Guangzhou in 2003, after a four-year sojourn in Thailand. In 2011, after the sudden death of a former community representative, Dieng became the President of the Senegalese community. ‘During my first seven years here, I was an active participant in community activities, but it was not until he [the former representative] passed away that I realised the importance of having a community organisation’, he explained. ‘We went through a very difficult process to repatriate his body, and if we had not been united, it would not have been possible’, he added. As Dieng and other community members realised that they would most probably face other difficult situations in the future, they decided to get organised and be prepared.‘Soon after he passed away, we organised an election’, Dieng said, confessing that he never imagined he was going to become a community representative, much less hold a position that would put him in contact with the Senegalese diplomatic corps in China. ‘Before, I was only a simple trader that loved football, now I’m the one who takes care of the community members. Yes, I’m more important now, but I still play football every Saturday night’, Dieng told me.

‘Our situation is very different to that of Nigerians. We are not a big community and overstayers are very rare. So, the most important function of this office is a social one’, Dieng said, mentioning that his office attempts to reproduce the feeling of being in Senegal.‘We provide social security and organise all types of celebrations and cultural activities that we would have in our country’. As with the Ghanaian community, the Senegalese office have implemented some kind of insurance scheme and membership system for their 150-odd members in Guangzhou. ‘Most Senegalese here are males who have their families back home, so we try to get together, help them forget about their problems, and ensure that they are alright’, he said, explaining that ‘the biggest challenge has been to convince people, especially newcomers, of the advantages of registering as members’. Nonetheless, Dieng believes that Senegalese presence in China will not last long. ‘In the past, we were able to make visa runs to Macau, but they stopped that. After that, we were going to Malaysia. Now they are forcing us to go all the way back to Senegal’. As a consequence of this, many of the community members are thinking of leaving China for good. And many have, over the five years prior to the publication of this book, the Senegalese community has shrunk significantly.

When asked about the leading role that the Nigerian community office plays in the general landscape of African communities in the city, Dieng said,‘When Emma claims to be the “President of Africa in China”, he might be going a bit too far’. Nonetheless, he views the notion ofbringing all the community offices in the city together as a positive development. ‘We have been in conversation about unifying African voices, in particular after the 2012 incident’, he said. ‘But there are still many steps to be taken in that direction and, as we have no obligation to take them, I don’t think we are going to achieve that unity anytime soon’.

Moreover, Dieng warned that although Africans from diff erent countries may experience similar difficulties in China, they still had cultural differences. ‘We have the same skin, but not the same habits’, he said, while explaining that it would be very difficult for Senegalese, and other West African francophone communities, to be organised under a Nigerian leadership. Furthermore, according to Dieng, when the idea of an all-African office was introduced to local authorities following the 2012 demonstration, authorities were not pleased and dismissed the proposal. ‘They didn’t want us to negotiate with them as a whole. China, as a communist country, is very wary of people organising themselves, so they kept dealing with us only on a national and separate basis’. Dieng argues that if there is to be unity among African community offices in Guangzhou, they should first strengthen the already important links they have along regional and cultural lines. ‘West African francophones here; Nigerians, Cameroonians and Ghanaians there; people from the Congos over there; southern African Portuguese speakers; and so on. After that, we could consider creating a super community office, or something like that’, he concluded, as he proudly showed me letters from the local Public Security Bureau and from his embassy in Beijing addressing him as ‘Mr. President’.

Figure 3.4 Dieng in his office in Xiaobei (photo by author)

Finally, while still incipient, the networks of support organised through these informal community offices can be seen as a broader attempt to generate spaces where individuals can feel ‘at home away from home’. Among Africans in the city, it is generally agreed that the emergence of these offices has had a positive impact on the lives of those residing in Guangzhou. However, while local authorities informally recognise these organisations, their effectiveness is heavily curtailed by the fact that they lack the formal, legal frameworks to empower their representational activities. In this way, their efforts to forge a collective identity (and to home Guangzhou) are also constrained, albeit on a different scale, by the transiency and precarity discussed throughout this book.