Xia Chao

XIA CHAO, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was approved funding in September 2023 to aid research on “Africatown in Guangzhou as Geosemiotic Assemblage: Grassroots Language and Materiality on the Move in the Post−COVID-19 World.” Recent anthropology research on metrolingual and semiotic signs indicates new ways of seeing the sociolinguistic, cultural, and sensory aspects of public space in social life. Combining these perspectives in a geosemiotic approach, this ethnography aims to explore these aspects of the Africatown which has emerged as unique social space for approximately 100,000 migrants from Africa in Guangzhou, the manufacturing and transportation hub in southern China over the past three decades. The Africatown shows improved anthropological attention to grassroots globalization and multilingualism; namely, flows of non-elite people, languages, goods, and cultures across nations at the individual level. This study draws on ethnographic fieldwork to explore how Africatown exemplifies Africanness and the transnational flows of non-elite people, languages, goods, and cultures. By examining how languages, material objects, and other semiotic aspects entangle with African migrants’ identities, perceptions, and practices in Africatown, this study contributes to interdisciplinary discussions on physical space and offers a more nuanced understanding of (de-)globalization through African migrants’ lived experiences. It further enriches the broader narrative of globalization by foregrounding the everyday practices of grassroots migrants in an interconnected yet increasingly fragmented world.