Forms of mobility/mobility of forms

My approach to transnationality, however, is not one that emphasises fluidity. Indeed, my efforts to ground different forms of mobility and give prominence to the lived experiences of those who practice mobility at different paces, grades, and positions should be clear by now. As such, my approach to the analysis of transnationality is one that is grounded in the intertwining of mobility and emplacement (Collins, 2011). In this book, I have attempted to bring together the movement of people, the things they do (imagine and aspire to), and the localised implications of those actions. To clarify, my approach to transnationality relies on the interplay between urban spatialities, mobilities, and materialities — an approach that has the intention to better understand how Ong’s (1992) ‘transnational condition’ affects the lived experiences of individuals on the move (in terms of knowing, being, and becoming).

As I highlighted earlier, the constellation of forms of mobility converging in Guangzhou can be collectively conceptualised as components of a transnational ‘entrepreneurial form’. As components of this mobile form, however, these multiple forms of mobility do not lose their distinctiveness (they can be traced to different origins and have their own characteristics), and they remain inherently independent. However, when brought together, they give rise to the materialisation of a visible sociocultural formation — what I have discursively presented in this book as ‘African presence’ in the city. Put another way, this entrepreneurial form (i.e. African presence) is a collage of multiple forms of mobility that organise and articulate mobile forms as they converge. The entrepreneurial form in Guangzhou, for example, encapsulates several other forms and formations best exemplified by micro-communities, trading associations, artistic scenes, and religious congregations (among other practices) that are (re)produced when individuals travel.

The forms of mobility constituting this mobile form are transnational, not only because they involve the border crossings of thousands of individuals or have the potential to transform the nation-state or national identities, but because they emerge from longstanding historical flows that may traws-cend nation-state centred histories, divisions, and identities. Likewise, mobile forms are transnational not only because they move in relatively unruly ways across nation-states, but because the ideas, customs, desires, passions, and aspirations fuelling the entrepreneurial drives that constitute the forms are not nationally based/produced. Indeed, these transnational mobile forms are unruly, chaotic, and self-organising forms (or assemblages) that, while travelling through space and time, are grounded and embedded in (and through) localities and locales. So, while mobile forms such as the entrepreneurial form can be conceptualised as buoyant assemblages of relationships, they are also place-based (socially embedded), but not necessarily place-bound (territorially embedded). As such, they can be grasped from particular sites of social interaction (or platforms) and on different scales. Indeed, not only the multiple forms of mobility converging in Guangzhou require a conceptualisation through emplacement to be better understood, but also the mobility of forms requires emplacement, or grounding.

Diff erent voices from within the fields of humanities and social sciences have called for analyses of transnationality to be grounded in the everyday experiences of those who move (physically and metaphorically) in transnational ways. Contrary to the common assumption that the only way to study transnationality is to follow people, money and things through routes connecting locales in multiple countries, I contend (based on the fieldwork I did for this book) that transnational processes can also be examined from a ‘local’ multi-scalar perspective. Indeed, transnationality entails much more than only the movement between countries, and as such it can be analysed through a grounded/emplaced perspective. I found my grounding in what I theoretically conceptualise as the ‘discursive sites of the transnational’ — sites which are spaces, practices, things, and aspirations where the multiple forms of mobility and the mobile forms I described above converge. Throughout this book, I locate these sites of the transnational in neighbourhoods (spatialities), things and practices (materialities), grassroots forms of organisation, and ‘individual’ aspirations.

At the level of spatialities, I located transnationality at two levels. Firstly, in the longstanding economic flows that, throughout the last three or four decades, have functioned as drivers of the necessary urban and political transformations that have resulted in Guangzhou becoming a site of heightened mobilities. And secondly, in the contemporary interactions at the urban level between multiple (human and non-human) actors (e.g. individuals, organisations, institutions, and so on). Materialities and spatialities are certainly difficult to analytically separate; and in urban spaces, they are often intricately enmeshed. However, I contend that the emergence of certain things and practices (that I analysed in Chapter 2) is informed by transnational materialities — for example, relationships and histories that expand (and can be traced) in transnational ways. The grassroots forms of organisation and placemaking processes conducted by individuals and collectives in Guangzhou are great platforms from where to analyse how transnational movement requires (and generates) diverse forms of organisation. Finally, focusing on aspirations provides a window into the drives, desires, and imaginations of individuals, and how they negotiate these against the regimes of mobility that regulate their transnational journeys.

Finally, as I have shown throughout this book, these sites offer possibilities to critically observe and analyse how the complex material, political, affective, and emotional geographies of transnationality unfold and expand. In other words, observing this case study from these sites is also useful in that it allows the researcher to ‘ground the transnational’. By grounding the transnational, I mean expropriating it from the sphere of the ‘global ecumene’ and bringing it down not only to the levels of the region, city, locality, and neighbourhood, but to the body and the passions, drives, desires, and aspirations contained within it. Certain transnational connections are scattered and embedded in a plethora of activities and practices that usually go unnoticed when the nation-state is at the centre of the analysis. In this vein, I believe that the ‘condition of transnationality’ is a central dynamic in the forms of mobility and mobility of forms that organise African presence in Guangzhou. My intention throughout this book has been to locate the sites where those scatterings and embeddings occur, and to analyse how the condition of transnationality operates at several dimensions and scales of this presence, and ultimately in the lived experiences of Africans on the move in China. I hope I have managed to do that.