Suitcases & Containers:
Considering trade, migration and urban change
This one-day workshop at the Université Libre de Bruxelles will examine the nexus of trade networks, migration circuits, and urban change, focusing on small-scale transnational entrepreneurs dealing in textiles and consumer goods as well as the marketplaces they frequent.
Literature on ‘globalization from below’ has drawn attention not just to growth in South-South trade but also to the role played by millions of traders exporting consumer goods in suitcases and containers from production places like China and Turkey and re-export centres such as Dubai to markets across the world. The workshop will delve into the intertwining of migration circuits with trade networks, examining the organization of flows of goods and capital and the way this impacts people’s choices and chances to move and travel transnationally. With an especial focus on African markets, we will compare trading networks dealing with new clothing produced in China to those dealing with secondhand clothes from Western Europe. Speakers will focus on the emergence of trade nodes and networks over time, dynamics of consolidation and competition, and patterns of inclusion and exclusion.
Program
9:00 Welcome coffee
9:30 Opening address and welcome
Andrea Rea (ULB)
Kristin Bartik (Fondation Wiener-Anspach)
Emma Lochery & Martin Rosenfeld (ULB)
9:45 Panel 1 – The Business of Transnational Trade
Squeezing Out a Profit: Container logistics from Guangzhou to African ports
Heidi Haugen (Univ of Oslo)
Global Fabric Circulations: From China to the world through Indian traders
Ka Kin Cheuk (Leiden Univ)
From Nairobi’s Eastleigh to China: Precarity, professionalism, and the art of the sale
Emma Lochery (ULB)
The Bridge: A cover/core model of China-Nigeria informal trading networks
Yu Qiu (Leiden Univ)
12:00 Lunch Break
13:30 Panel 2 – Nodes and Networks
The Making of Commercial Centralities in the Arab World. Compared study of two marketplaces of transnational trade in Cairo and Oran
Anne Bouhali (Toulouse/Paris Sorbonne)
Facebook Traders in and Beyond the City of Khartoum, Sudan
Griet Steel (KU Leuven)
Congolese Migrations and Transnational Trading Networks
Sylvie Ayimpam (Aix-Marseille Univ)
15:00 Coffee break
15:15 Panel 3 – Second-hand Circulations
Used Clothes at the U.S. – Mexico Border: Commerce, smuggling and criminality
Efren Sandoval (CIESAS – Mexico & IMERA - Marseille)
Conflicting Second-Hand Market Places in Cotonou, Benin
Martin Rosenfeld (ULB)
The Emerging Politics of the Global Second-Hand Clothing Trade: To reuse or to recycle? + Documentary film Unravel
Lucy Norris (UCLondon)
17:00 Book Launch
Neil Carrier will discuss his new book, Little Mogadishu: Eastleigh, Nairobi's Global Somali Hub
CONTACT US
For questions or to RSVP, please contact us by filling in the box below.
“Border Crossing, Trade and Trust”
This event is the final workshop of the project “Border Crossing, Trade and Trust: Tracking clothing supply chains to Nairobi and Cotonou.” Project researchers have been researching the different supply chains involved in the clothing trade in these two cities, including both the importation of second-hand clothing from Europe and cheap new clothing from Asia. Our research has focused on the construction and management of transnational networks as well as the way these networks have interacted with governance of local marketplaces.
“Border Crossing, Trade and Trust” is a joint project of the Group for Research on Ethnic Relations, Migration & Equality (GERME) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) and African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. The project is funded by the Foundation Wiener-Anspach.
Website photos by Neil Carrier.
