Ding Fei

My book unpacks the uneven geographies of capital-labor and expatriate-local relations at Chinese workplaces in Africa, drawing upon archives, interviews, oral histories, and workplace ethnographies in Chinese companies in Ethiopia. I examine the capacities and constraints of different strands of globalized Chinese capital in engaging with transnational production and labor management on the one hand, and the articulation of control, power, and agency at the workplace level in generating varied forms of empowerment and marginalization for expatriate and local employees on the other. The book contributes a meso-level understanding of how firms, places, and individuals pursue diverse yet highly contingent globalization trajectories under China-Africa cooperation.