Periodic Reporting for period 4 - INFRAGLOB (AFRICA's ‘INFRASTRUCTURE GLOBALITIES’: Rethinking the Political Geographies of Economic Hubs from the Global South)
Période du rapport: 2022-10-01 au 2025-02-28
INFRAGLOB aimed to understand how transnational governance changes through the development of increased South-South relations. The project examined the case of Chinese and Brazilian companies in large-scale mining and infrastructure projects in Africa as entry point to find out.
The research group analysed dominant discourses in Chinese and Brazilian policies and speeches and conducted interviews with practitioners involved in everyday project implementation. Based on extensive fieldwork, it mapped how Chinese and Brazilian companies and practitioners manage relations with African host societies, and how they understand and govern security around projects. This provided the basis for assessing if and how growing China/Brazil – Africa relations foster alternative modes of conduct in corporate-society relations. The project further assessed how such practices travelled to transform broader transnational governance practices.
As international relations become more polycentric, this project examined specifically, how growing diversity of practitioner communities affects their capacity to shape political outcomes (policies regulating transnational companies, transnationally used practices around corporate sites). It also examined whether Chinese and Brazilian companies in Africa were contested differently compared to other others. The project offered conceptual tools to capture otherwise invisible forms of contestation, such as in authoritarian contexts, and sought to break new ground in theorising transnational publics in a polycentric global order using an innovative mix of digital methods, social media analysis, and fieldwork.
The research group analysed dominant discourses in Chinese and Brazilian policies and speeches and conducted interviews with practitioners involved in everyday project implementation. Based on extensive fieldwork, it mapped how Chinese and Brazilian companies and practitioners manage relations with African host societies, and how they understand and govern security around projects. This provided the basis for assessing if and how growing China/Brazil – Africa relations foster alternative modes of conduct in corporate-society relations. The project further assessed how such practices travelled to transform broader transnational governance practices.
As international relations become more polycentric, this project examined specifically, how growing diversity of practitioner communities affects their capacity to shape political outcomes (policies regulating transnational companies, transnationally used practices around corporate sites). It also examined whether Chinese and Brazilian companies in Africa were contested differently compared to other others. The project offered conceptual tools to capture otherwise invisible forms of contestation, such as in authoritarian contexts, and sought to break new ground in theorising transnational publics in a polycentric global order using an innovative mix of digital methods, social media analysis, and fieldwork.
Despite the challenging context of the COVID pandemic and shrinking spaces for research due to growing authoritarianism, the project achieved its core objectives. It demonstrated that Brazilian and Chinese actors frame outbound investment as solidarity-driven, win-win developments, and that African political elites use similar narratives. While these narratives conceal important power asymmetries, elites foster their own interests through them (see e.g. Cezne and Hönke 2022 in World Development). At the same time, we demonstrate the liminal positioning towards the Global South that produces ambiguous results: China portrays itself as both part of, and separate, from the Global South, combining developmentalist, nationalist, and moral cosmopolitan discourses. Brazil has been both nurturing its Global South identity critical of Western hegemony while positioning itself as part of ‘the West’ and a bridge between worlds (see Hönke, Cezne and Yang 2023 in Global Society). While major Brazilian companies frame their policies as culturally sensitive, leveraging Brazil’s linguistic and historical ties with Africa, this masks environmental degradation, labour exploitation, and corporate control in Brazilian-led projects. China has issued demanding social guidelines for its companies abroad, yet Chinese professionals pragmatically muddle through and improvise with significant leeway. Since they remain caught in a state-centric worldview, however, they pragmatically nurture relations and donate in an ad hoc way as they deem necessary, yet struggle with community expectations to provide, or compensate for the negative impacts of their work, and try to manage conflicts in contexts with limited state presence (see for example Yifan Yang 2026 in Africa Spectrum; Bunskoek and Hönke 2026 in Pluriversal International Relations).
In terms of whether and how new practices emerge from this and expand globally, the project shows, first, that neither Brazil nor China exports a ‘model’ to Africa. Rather, around their sites, manifold and conflicting practices prevail. Second, we followed Chinese professionals to trace incremental changes of practices through learning in transnational professional communities of practice. An article in Global Studies Quarterly explains how and why transnational professional communities are much more stratified along lines of race and identity than assumed, with Chinese expats separated from other issue professionals in the same occupation.
Finally, the research group demonstrated that frequency and modes of contestation rarely differ regarding non-Western companies. Some differences stand out though regarding scale and the effectiveness of transnational contestation. Brazilian projects have encountered well-organised transnational alliances (see Cezne 2022) which is less the case for Chinese companies. Limited opportunities to cooperate with Chinese social organisations, or to mobilize a Chinese public back home, limit an important channel for public scrutiny and accountability (see chapters in Africa’s Global Infrastructures 2024; also Sändig, Hönke and Kabemba 2024).
In terms of whether and how new practices emerge from this and expand globally, the project shows, first, that neither Brazil nor China exports a ‘model’ to Africa. Rather, around their sites, manifold and conflicting practices prevail. Second, we followed Chinese professionals to trace incremental changes of practices through learning in transnational professional communities of practice. An article in Global Studies Quarterly explains how and why transnational professional communities are much more stratified along lines of race and identity than assumed, with Chinese expats separated from other issue professionals in the same occupation.
Finally, the research group demonstrated that frequency and modes of contestation rarely differ regarding non-Western companies. Some differences stand out though regarding scale and the effectiveness of transnational contestation. Brazilian projects have encountered well-organised transnational alliances (see Cezne 2022) which is less the case for Chinese companies. Limited opportunities to cooperate with Chinese social organisations, or to mobilize a Chinese public back home, limit an important channel for public scrutiny and accountability (see chapters in Africa’s Global Infrastructures 2024; also Sändig, Hönke and Kabemba 2024).
INFRAGLOB provided an innovative, practice-based account of South-South relations and how they transform business – society relations in our contemporary world. Using sites of large-scale economic infrastructure in Africa as an entry point, it theorized South-South transformations, significantly advancing our understanding of an increasingly polycentric global order. It did so by moving away from state-centric accounts of emerging powers, notably China and Brazil, to non-state actors, relations and practices, professional communities, travelling knowledges, and modes and conditions of contestation that make up and transform international order. While the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil made South–South relations seem relegated to the past, for example, attention to companies, professionals and civil society brought the continuities in Brazil-Africa relations to the fore. Decentring ‘Global China’ beyond the state shows fragmented agency and variegated futures of transnational governance practices.
A main output from the project, the Africa’s Infrastructure Globalities book presents infrastructure sites as frontier zones of change. It investigates developmental ideas, processes, and techniques that emerge from African sites of South-South investment, covering projects primarily funded by Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian companies. The bottom-up account of governance, contestation and everyday relation-making show no transposition of alternative models, but rather trajectories of converging practices of governance alongside other ways of going about things.
The project also developed a new research agenda on transnational professionals that pushes the boundaries of existing theories of a sociology of transnational professionals and communities of practice in world politics. Our work demonstrated that Chinese expats remain separated from other issue professionals in their domain. This highlights the importance of stratification and hierarchies along lines of race and identity in transnational relations (see Bunskoek and Hoenke in Global Studies Quarterly). We must understand fragmenting, and multiplying communities of practice, leading to new dynamics of exclusion in a world order that struggles to define and maintain common rules and shared ‘know-how’ in transnational policy domains.
Based on a unique combination of event and social media analyses, and fieldwork, INFRAGLOB also contributed to our understanding of transnational mobilisation in response to emerging powers. Their history and domestic politics shape the ways in which affected populations can contest negative fallouts of large-scale projects.
A main output from the project, the Africa’s Infrastructure Globalities book presents infrastructure sites as frontier zones of change. It investigates developmental ideas, processes, and techniques that emerge from African sites of South-South investment, covering projects primarily funded by Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian companies. The bottom-up account of governance, contestation and everyday relation-making show no transposition of alternative models, but rather trajectories of converging practices of governance alongside other ways of going about things.
The project also developed a new research agenda on transnational professionals that pushes the boundaries of existing theories of a sociology of transnational professionals and communities of practice in world politics. Our work demonstrated that Chinese expats remain separated from other issue professionals in their domain. This highlights the importance of stratification and hierarchies along lines of race and identity in transnational relations (see Bunskoek and Hoenke in Global Studies Quarterly). We must understand fragmenting, and multiplying communities of practice, leading to new dynamics of exclusion in a world order that struggles to define and maintain common rules and shared ‘know-how’ in transnational policy domains.
Based on a unique combination of event and social media analyses, and fieldwork, INFRAGLOB also contributed to our understanding of transnational mobilisation in response to emerging powers. Their history and domestic politics shape the ways in which affected populations can contest negative fallouts of large-scale projects.