Same-Same But Different: Chinese Traders’ Perspectives on African Labor

Abstract

This article analyzes labor conflicts in Chinese trade businesses in Ghana. After introducing the general situation of Chinese trading companies and the labor market in Ghana, I explore the factors that tend to make Chinese-African employment relations in the trading sector dysfunctional and conflict-prone. In a qualitative ethnographic account, I investigate recruitment processes, interpersonal relationships, concepts of authority, and sanctions and incentives, and elaborate on the specificities of diverging interpretations of reciprocity, social roles, practices and related symbolic significations within the interpersonal relations between Chinese employers and Ghanaian employees. I argue that these dimensions of interpersonal relations are crucial for understanding the development of conflict in the economic field analyzed, and also suggest an alternative reading of Chinese-African industrial labor conflicts, which have so far been discussed exclusively in terms of violations of formal regulations by Chinese enterprises, and their exploitative and abusive practices.