Ethnic congregation in a globalizing city: The case of Guangzhou, China

This paper investigates the new appearance of ethnic congregation in a Chinese city that is intimately tied to the worldwide web of production and global commodity chains. Through an empirical case study, the paper examines how the formation of ethnic enclaves in urban China is driven by the global shift of international production and the interaction between global forces and locally-bounded attributes. Its proposition is that the ethnic enclave should be conceptualized as both part of a global system and a locally-constructed place. This study adds to the “global–local nexus” literature on urban transformation by showing transnational spaces are produced by both exogenous and endogenous forces under global shift of capital, production and people.