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Chinese actors have emerged as major funders and developers of large-scale transnational infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond. Despite this profound shift, geographers have not yet arrived at a clear conceptualisation of such projects. We show how the literature is overly reliant on a functional view of the Chinese state, structural economic factors, single case studies, and bilateral relations, generating monocausal explanations of outcomes. We develop a new conceptual framework emphasising variegation driven by shifting assemblages of actors, dynamic strategic coupling, and multi-scalar processes of territorialisation. To operationalise our framework, we draw on process tracing and incorporated comparisons across cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Belt and Road Initiative is the most visible manifestation of the country's wider internationalisation efforts in which infrastructure connectivity projects are central. Existing spatialised narratives of these projects have usefully focused on long-standing geopolitical binaries and bilateral state relations, as well as newer spatial ontologies of corridors, zones and networks. Yet they tend to underplay central-local state relations in the countries receiving Chinese infrastructure investment and so this paper examines these intra-state dynamics through three case studies of Chinese-backed transport projects in Germany, Italy and Hungary. Using Jessop, Brenner and Jones' 'TPSN' approach we argue that the promise of these infrastructure projects was virtuous insertion of places into global production networks, but in practice we see the central state over-riding local political actors. In Germany and Italy this is in the name of 'de-risking' Chinese investments whereby the re-centralisation of state power is a response to a perceived 'China threat'. In Hungary, the centralised regime uses major infrastructure for legitimatory purposes and uses the growing connectivity to China as an Eastwards balance to its strained relations with Western Europe. We conclude by arguing that greater attentiveness to spatiality and power are needed in future studies of 'de-risking'. • We advance debates on China's internationalisation by focusing on intra-state relations in the countries that receive Chinese investment. • We undertake a comparative analysis of three major transport infrastructure projects to move beyond the tendency for single case studies. • We adapt the 'TPSN' framework posited by Jessop et al to capture how multiple socio-spatial registers intersect but also how they change over time. • From 2013 to 2017 central and local states were aligned over inward Chinese investment but as 'riskiness' increased states re-centralised control. • As de-risking will deepen for some years approaches are needed which recognise the interests of local as well as national and supranational actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the 'global South' which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of 'global development', we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine‐grained understanding of how political territories and processes are imagined and produced by and through China's internationalization, focusing on infrastructure as a 'technology' of territorialization. Much of the focus on China's internationalization has been on state‐to‐state relations, but this obscures the 'omni‐channel politics' that China practises. Using a critical literature review and illustrative case study, this article develops the idea of omni‐channel politics to posit a view of 'twisted' territories in which political processes and development outcomes are more complex and contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana's status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country's strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our analysis of Ghana's hydrocarbons in the political settlements literature, which moves us beyond the 'good governance' approaches so often linked to 'resource curse' thinking. We also move beyond the instrumentalism of political settlements theory to examine the role political ideas play in shaping resource governance. We argue that inter-coalitional rivalry has generally undermined the benefits of Ghana's oil but that a crude interests-based interpretation is insufficient to explain differences between these coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social research some places and populations are disproportionately targeted by researchers. While relatively little work exists on the concept of over-research those accounts that do exist tend to focus on participant-based research relationships and not place-based research relationships. Using interdisciplinary approaches and fieldwork experiences from a recently completed qualitative study of urban multiculture in England we develop the over-research debates in three key ways. First, the notion of ‘over-research’ carries negative connotations and we reflect on these as well as the possibility of more nuanced readings of research encounters. Second, we develop a more relational analysis, in which place – the London Borough of Hackney – is understood to be an animating force in the research process. Third, we argue that our experiences of the research provide evidence that many of the participants in the project were adept and confident in their engagements with the research process. In this way, the article suggests, disproportionate research attention may foster not research fatigue but a more knowing and co-productive research relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In analysing Africa's development it is important to consider the complex global-local dynamics at play and the necessity of getting underneath representations of the continent in order to better understand its social change. Taking these concerns into recent work on China's engagement with Africa, I argue that the focus on Chinese power tends to occlude the role of African agency in these relationships. I demonstrate this through the case of a gas plant in Ghana that is financed by Chinese loans secured against oil sales that is being built by one of China's main national oil companies. The wider developmental benefits, however, are limited and deals such as this are brokered at the elite level which means that 'ordinary' Africans gain relatively little from these major projects. As such, while African agency is evident it is confined to elites connected to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a political economy framework for analysing China's engagements with Africa. It situates the rise of China in the context of the changing balance of power in the world system and particularly China's re-entry into spheres of influence in Africa that have been the purview of the former European colonial powers for two centuries or more. It begins by arguing that current approaches to China, Africa and international relations are fragmented in particular ways which prevent the development of a more critical political economy. It then examines a pervasive theme in China-Africa relations, which assumes that the Chinese work through enclaved investments to secure the resources of low-income economies, though in this sense the Chinese are no different from other investors. Where they do differ is in their bundling of aid, trade and FDI and their use of imported labour, which has been termed 'surgical colonialism'. The article does not dispute the existence of Chinese enclaves but argues that we need more empirical evidence on the levels of labour importation in relation to local labour market conditions. This requires a more nuanced understanding of state-capital dynamics in those countries where the Chinese operate although the model appears to be one of elite brokerage. However, the enclaved investments and inter-elite bargaining are only part of the story and the closing sections of the article analyse the role of independent Chinese businesses in Africa's social and political development, which moves us beyond the enclave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is the major 'new' player in Africa and impacts on development and planning in numerous ways. This Viewpoint assesses whether, and how, China alters the way in which African states plan, both now and in the future. It argues for disaggregating 'China' and 'Africa' and the actors which drive and mediate these relationships. While the Chinese have refocused attention on economic growth for development and provide much-needed infrastructure, the case is made that they do not greatly alter the way in which African states plan. The Chinese projects tend to be elitist and enclaved, with limited local consultation, thus remaining relatively non-transparent. Compounding this is the weak local regulation, which has the potential to release a spiral of undercutting standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BSTRACT Discussions on the politics of Chinese engagement with African development have been marked by increasing concern over Chinese use of aid in exchange for preferential energy deals. Normative liberal discourse criticizes the Chinese for disbursing 'rogue aid' and undermining good governance in the African continent. These criticisms not only ignore the longer-term motivations and modalities of Chinese aid and the historical diversity of Chinese relations with Africa, but also uncritically assume 'Western' aid to be morally 'superior' and 'more effective' in terms of development outcomes. This paper consists of three parts. First, it will discuss the debates surrounding Chinese engagement in Africa, especially around aid and development issues. Second, the paper maps the historical development of China-Africa engagement and investigates the impacts of the changing modalities of Chinese aid with reference to case studies of two countries: Angola and Ghana. It then offers a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between these two cases. The principal argument is that Chinese and Western donors employ different ideologies and practices of governance to conceal their own interests and political discourses in the African continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, has increasingly dynamic economic, political and diplomatic activities on the continent. Chinese leaders and strategists believe that China's historical experience and vision of economic development resonates powerfully with African counterparts and that the long-standing history of friendly political linkages and development co-operation offers a durable foundation for future partnership. Both in China and amongst some Western commentators a form of exceptionalism and generalisation regarding both China and Africa has been emerging. In this article instead we seek to develop theoretical tools for examining China as a geopolitical and geoeconomic actor that is both different and similar to other industrial powers intervening in Africa. This is premised on a political economy approach that ties together material interests with a deconstruction of the discursive or 'extra-economic' ways by which Chinese capitalism internationalises. From there we use this framework to analyse contemporary Chinese engagement in Africa. We examine the changing historical position of Africa within Beijing's foreign policy strategy and China's vision of the evolving international political system, looking in particular at China's bilateral and state-centric approach to working with African 'partners'. Chinese practice is uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the notion of 'development' as an independent policy field of the kind that emerged among Western nations in the course of the 1950s and increasingly China has come to be viewed as a 'rogue creditor' and a threat to the international aid industry. Rather than highlighting one strand of Chinese relations with African states (such as aid or governance) we propose here that it is necessary to critically reflect on the wider geopolitics of China-Africa relations (past and present) in order to understand how China is opening up new 'choices' and altering the playing field for African development for the first time since the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Les flux migratoires de la Chine vers l’Afrique se sont intensifiés récemment suite à une série d’initiatives du gouvernement chinois. En dépit du fait que ceux-ci constituent un aspect important des relations Chine-Afrique, il n’y a eu jusqu’à maintenant aucune tentative d’évaluer systématiquement leurs impacts économiques, sociaux et politiques. Cet article établit, dans un premier temps, les dimensions analytiques générales concernant les motivations qui incitent à émigrer et les processus de développement. Dans un deuxième temps, l’article évalue les données disponibles sur ces tendances migratoires, en notant que celles-ci sont souvent très spéculatives. L’article se penche ensuite sur les politiques chinoises de l’internationalisation et de l’Afrique, ainsi que leurs dimensions économiques et socio-politiques respectivement. Économiquement, beaucoup de grandes entreprises chinoises investissent dans les secteurs clés de ressources naturelles en Afrique, mais pour la plupart des Africains la présence chinoise se manifeste par l’existence de petits commerçants sur les marchés locaux. Au plan social, les Chinois ont été bien accueillis en Afrique, même si leur intégration reste limitée. Cependant, des tensions ont surgi dans certains pays, et ont été exploitées par des hommes politiques africains.European Journal of Development Research (2009) 21, 588–605. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2009.22 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economic geography of development in Africa and the role played by China in developments on the continent. The global economy, poverty, AIDS, fertilizers, road building, and international financial institutions are mentioned. Questions regarding the intentions of China are asked, including a need to fuel its burgeoning capitalist economy, as well as imperialist concerns. The oil industry in Africa is also discussed, including in the Gulf of Guinea. Migration of Chinese workers into various African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, Angola, Mauritius and Zambia, is also dealt with.

For impoverished African states the attraction of inward flows of capital is vital and migrants are one such source of finance. Some governments actively encourage this, which brings out tensions between national affiliation and more particularistic forms of identification. This paper examines this in the context of Ghana. Between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s there was large-scale out-migration from Ghana, creating what has been termed a 'neo-diaspora'. The migrants have mainly settled in cities in Western Europe and North America where they have developed institutional networks linking them to other diasporic locations and to Ghana. These migrants have complex identities forged from multiple meetings in numerous places. Some of these are rooted in hometown, clan, and family attachments and the obligations this brings. The current government (in line with many developing countries) is making a major play to 'harness' the diaspora for political support and inward investment. Tensions are being played out about dual citizenship and whether the migrants' economic commitments to Ghana are matched by rights as full citizens. The Ghana government has to tread a careful path between attracting investment and garnering the right sort of political support, since people in the diaspora often have an ambivalent relationship to domestic politics. One of the vehicles through which the Ghanaian state seeks to square this is through encouraging hometown associations in various cities in the global North to fund development at the local level through various local-local partnerships. Hence, the nation, the national good, and development are being promoted through particularistic ethnic and locality-based organisations, which brings to light multiple and overlapping political communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) experiment, along with other innovations promoted by the international financial institutions over the past decade, has promised to secure pro-poor forms of accountability in relation to development policy-making. New consultative processes and new forms of conditionality each promise to re-order relationships between poor citizens and their governments, and between governments and donors respectively. Using evidence from Bolivia and Zambia, we identify three critical problems with these claims. First, there is a tendency to focus on promoting accountability mechanisms that are largely discretionary and lack significant disciplinary power, particularly those reliant on certain forms of civil society participation. Second, donors have failed to overcome the contradictions regarding the role of extra-national actors in securing accountability mechanisms within particular states. Third, there is a tendency within the PRS experiment to overlook the deeper forms of politics that might underpin effective accountability mechanisms in developing countries. Ensuring accountability is not simply a technocratic project, but rather is critical for a substantive politics of democratization which goes to the heart of the wider contract between states and citizens. The PRS experiment, as located within a broader project of 'inclusive liberalism', reveals little potential to address this challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a review of international political economy.

This paper examines the challenges of new converging technologies to governance, pointing out the difficulties politics and public policy face in keeping pace with the rapid progress of such technologies and balancing benefits, risks and uncertainties. The driving question behind this paper is what can theory and practice learn from each other in governing technology for development? The relationships among technology, development and governance are explored, leading the way for further papers in this special issue to question how governance is occurring in practice, what forms of decision-making are taking place, and how the politics of development are being played out through technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface to articles on geography published in this periodical is presented.

The author analyses how identities and obligations operate within the spaces of transnational communities and how this affects development. Within spatially diffuse communities, identities are fluid and overlapping, as are the obligations to multiple others—be that kin, ethnic group, or nation—in different localities. The author is concerned with the institutions through which these identities are formed and obligations are fulfilled. These include families, clans, hometown associations, and religious organisations, which link people 'abroad' to people 'at home'. The author understands these spaces as a form of public sphere involving a 'deterritorialised' citizenship, which has been termed 'embedded cosmopolitanism'. In this way, obligations are not legally defined but operate as part of the moral universe of those concerned. The case study is based upon recent fieldwork on Ghanaians in the United Kingdom and their connections to other Ghanaians outside Ghana and to those at home. The ways in which these complex networks of affiliation operate, as well as the ways in which the state seeks to 'capture' support from them, and how migrants selectively redefine both ethnic identities and family boundaries, are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses relevance in development studies. We argue that current debates around relevance assume a hegemonic view of development, which is bolstered by the high levels of research funding from key policy-making institutions. We feel relevance can be pluralized and radicalized, but that this requires us to be ideologically transparent and to examine other ways of undertaking and validating knowledge production. This involves first, acknowledging the material and ethical connectedness, but not sameness, of people; secondly, a relational tension between discipline and interdiscipline; thirdly, that problem-framing and influencing involves 'researchers' and 'users', whereby 'users' include students, practitioners, decision-makers and 'the poor'. Further, we argue that such dialogic approaches require alternative criteria for rigour. Positivistic criteria imply a distinctive form of rationality, but if rationality is also pluralized then alternative epistemologies and methodologies of working with multiple rationalities is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to(and in sympathy with) many of the critical points that have been lodged against participatory approaches to development and governance within international development, this article seeks to relocate participation within a radical politics of development. We argue that participation needs to be theoretically and strategically informed by a radical notion of‘citizenship’, and be located within the‘critical modernist’ approach to development. Using empirical evidence drawn from a range of contemporary approaches to participation, the article shows that participatory approaches are most likely to succeed:(i) where they are pursued as part of a wider radical political project;(ii) where they are aimed specifically at securing citizenship rights and participation for marginal and subordinate groups; and(iii) when they seek to engage with development as an underlying process of social change rather than in the form of discrete technocratic interventions— although we do not use these findings to argue against using participatory methods where these conditions are not met. Finally, we consider the implications of this relocation for participation in both theoretical and strategic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term network has become a hallmark of the development industry. In principle networks have the potential to provide a more flexible and non-hierarchical means of exchange and interaction that is also more innovative, responsive and dynamic, while overcoming spatial separation and providing scale economies. Although the label 'networks' currently pervades discourses about the relationships between organisations in development, there has been surprisingly little research or theorisation of such networks. This article is a critical evaluation of the claims of developmental networks from a theoretical perspective. While networks are regarded as a counter-hegemonic force, we argue that networks are not static entities but must be seen as an ongoing and emergent process. Moreover, theory overlooks power relationships within networks and is unable to conceptualise the relationship between power and values. These observations open up a research agenda that the authors are exploring empirically in forthcoming publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local 'participation' and 'empowerment', which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the 'new' Left and the 'new' Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in four key political arenas: decentralised service delivery, participatory development, social capital formation and local development, and collective actions for 'radical democracy'. We argue that, by focusing so heavily on 'the local', the see manifestations tend to underplay both local inequalities and power relations as well as national and transnational economic and political forces. Following from this, we advocate a stronger emphasis on the politics of the local, ie on the political use of 'the local' by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue interrogates the relationship between politics, development and technology. The aim is to think creatively about the ways in which technologies can enhance the well-being of the poorest and most marginalised in empowering ways by using a governance lens. Frequently, governance debates remain abstract and need empirical grounding; at the same time, empirical studies are often lacking in theoretical grounding and analysis. The papers in this special issue have attempted to bridge theory and practice in governing technology for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to research on urban multiculture and debates as to how people routinely live and experience ethnic diversity in their everyday lives. This research takes an ‘unpanicked’ approach to multiculture that sits differently to, although not unaffected by, multiculturalism as policy objective and those debates around multiculturalism that variously celebrate cultural difference or construct it through crisis talk. Critical to this paper are the routine phenomenologies of multiculture and the everyday practices, competencies and skills of young people attending college. Because of their diverse intakes and the openness of young people to difference, colleges are key sites within which urban multiculture is experienced and through which it is defined. Based on participant observation, repeat in-depth discussion groups and interviews, the focus of this paper is young adults attending post-16 colleges and schools in three ethnically diverse urban locations. Colleges and schools are urban spaces that mediate sociality and student experience but are also woven into the wider urban setting in which they are placed. The paper explores the skills and competencies that young adults develop to negotiate college and we particularly focus on their use of jokes and the exercise of restraint to get along with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two-year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from three branches of franchised leisure and consumption cafe spaces. We pay particular attention to the ways these spaces work as settings of encounter and shared presence between groups often envisaged as separated by ethnic difference. Our findings suggest that corporate spaces which are more often dismissed as commercial, globalized spaces of soulless homogeneity can be locally inflected spaces whose cultural blandness may generate confident familiarity, ethnic mixity, mundane co-presence and inattentive forms of conviviality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convention suggests that multicultural areas tend to exhibit high levels of residential and educational segregation, high degrees of poverty and deprivation and low rates of contact between culturally distinct individuals and groups. By contrast, with the help of a case study of a fast growing English new town, this paper reflects on the experience of multicultural settlement in what might be described as an ordinary city: one in which that experience is relatively recent and whose identity is constantly in the process of being made and remade. It draws on qualitative research, based around semi-structured interviews, participant observation and the use of focus groups, to develop its conclusions. Moving beyond any notion that minority ethnic communities live 'parallel lives', the paper identifies and explores some of the ways in which the new city spaces of Milton Keynes are actively lived, negotiated and understood by the Ghanaian and Somali communities (and particularly by young people from those communities). It highlights the tensions between the ways in which difference is negotiated in practice and attempts to define communities through processes of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates around infrastructure tend to focus on the global North, yet in the global South demand for infrastructure is huge and we see new and emergent actors engaged in finance and construction; China being pre-eminent among them. China's interests in the global South have grown apace over the past decade, especially in terms of accessing resources and securing infrastructure deals. The role of Chinese banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in financing and building the projects reveals a blurring between geopolitical and commercial interests and processes. The article situates China's entry into the global South as part of a geopolitics that is simultaneously geoeconomic and interrogates these issues through case studies of Chinese-backed projects in Ghana and Cambodia. These projects are spatially and politically complex, with China adopting a range of financing models – often including an element of resource swaps – in which bank finance is critical and marks the Chinese as different from Western financiers. These international deals are secured at the political elite level and so bypass established forms of national governance and accountability in the recipient countries, while the turnkey construction projects remain locally enclaved. The cases also show that wider developmental benefits are limited, with 'ordinary' citizens – especially those in the rural areas – gaining relatively little from these major energy projects and the benefits accruing to urban-based elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is provided to the book reviews within the issue of the book "Lived Experiences," by this article's authors. Topics, including cultural diversity, cross-cultural differences in everyday life, ethnic relations, conflict, conviviality, community, public policy narratives of differences, are discussed.

This article contributes to understandings of the conviviality which has dominated recent sociological approaches to urban multiculture. The article argues for conviviality's conceptual extension by reference to recent rethinking of community as a profound sociality of 'being with' and a culture of urban practice. The article draws from a qualitative dataset examining sustained encounters of cultural difference and the relationships within social leisure organizations in three different English urban geographies. The article explores how the elective coming together of often ethnically diverse others, over time, in places, to do leisure 'things' meant these organizations could work as generative spaces of social interaction and shared practice through and in contexts of urban difference. The article concludes that putting conviviality as 'connective interdependencies' into dialogue with community as 'being in common' develops their sociological and explanatory power and counters the reductions and limitations that are associated with both concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2001, as the social and spatial compositions of multiculture and migration have become more complicated and diverse, geography has moved back to the centre of policy, political, and academic arguments about cultural difference and ethnic diversity in England. This spatial turn is most obvious in preoccupations with notions of increasing ethnic segregation, but it is also apparent in discussions of the possibility of everyday multicultural exchanges in relationally understood places. Responding to the work of others on these questions and in these places, and informed by data from research exploring Ghanaian and Somali migrant settlement in Milton Keynes, we review some of the quantitative and qualitative evidence being drawn on in academic, policy, and political debates about contemporary multiculture. We problematise the dominance of the concept of segregation in these debates and examine the value of the concept of conviviality for understanding the ways in which multiculture is lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]