Using case studies, this paper explores the challenges, risks and opportunities that women from both China and Africa face as they cross borders (voluntarily and involuntarily), enter foreign spaces and engage different markets. Issues of race, gender and citizenship come to the fore as women navigate transnational spaces.
Anita W. Plummer is a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta. She received her Ph.D. in African Studies with a focus on International Affairs from Howard University in Washington, DC. Her current book project, Navigating Difference: Africa and China’s Cultural and Political Geographies, examines various local, national and transnational narratives of South-South cooperation. Professor Plummer was a Mellon Post-doctoral fellow in the "Cultures in Transnational Perspective" Program and Visiting Professor in the Global Studies Program and the African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was also a Carter G. Woodson Center Pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia. She has been published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Foreign Policy in Focus andBustan. Her teaching and research interests are: (Sub-Saharan) African political economy, emerging markets, Sino-African diplomatic and trade relations, language and education policy and Chinese foreign policy.