Wandering women

The work of Congolese transnational traders

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103443
AutoresLesley Nicole Braun (0000-0002-5806-8775, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen89
Número2
Páginas378-397
Fecha de publicación2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972019000135
OpenAlexW2946359434
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas33

Congolesecommerçantes, or transnational women traders, travel abroad to cities such as Guangzhou in search of affordable products to import to Kinshasa. Without any support from local banks, women must search for the means to finance their trips and navigate a complex bureaucracy governed by unpredictable customs tariffs. Just as men rely on their social networks to ensure the success of their business activities, women traders must also forge relationships with people in positions of power. However, a woman's social network, linked to her business activities, invites assumptions about her sexual morality. Men working within the country's unstable economic landscape are celebrated for their ingenuity and ability to 'work the system', while a woman's sexual morality is perceived as being affected by, and bound up in, Kinshasa's corrupt business matrices. Transnationalcommerçantesare thus not only an important part of the economic milieu, largely governed by patron-client relationships; but are also representative of changing gender dynamics in Kinshasa. Based on multi-site fieldwork in Kinshasa and Guangzhou, this article explores the moral anxieties associated with women's transnational trade, anxieties that relate to broader issues about the politics of social networks within local bureaucratic infrastructures

Bureaucracy · Economics · Ingenuity · Morality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · TRIPS architecture · Work (physics · China's Global Influence and Migration · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Identity, and Health