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AbstractRather than examining what constitutes urban life in a particular city, this paper draws attention to how cities are 'placed' along individuals' life trajectories. The outcome of 15 months of ethnographic research among 102 residents of Lagos's Gowon Estate neighbourhood suggests that Lagos is better understood relationally, through subjective narratives of city life. Given its scale and position among Nigerian cities, the meanings of Lagos to different individuals must be illuminated via an examination of how they 'place' those urban places that are important to them – Lagos, hometowns and regional centres – both conceptually and practically within their lived experiences and current livelihoods. In short, this paper exemplifies and advocates a methodology that does not treat cities as a central analytical unit, but instead interprets the meanings of living in cities based on individual inhabitants' narratives, networks and other aspects of their lived experiences in Lagos and elsewhere.

The burgeoning interstate relation between China and Nigeria is in fact hiding the vulnerable condition of transnational Chinese petty entrepreneurship. Small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs in Nigeria are faced with everyday corruption practised by both Nigerian authorities and ordinary Nigerian people, the dominance of self-interest over cohesion and mutual support among the Chinese compatriots, and variations in state policies due to dynamic and changing interstate relations. To overcome their position of weakness, small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs strategize their interactions with both Nigerian and Chinese nationals. Informality is a characteristic of such interactions. Economic informality is primarily embodied in the documentation service businesses that are indebted to those popular corrupt practices in Nigeria; while social informality takes place in cyberspace. Interaction via the Internet among Chinese involved in Chinese-Nigerian businesses helps small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs to cope with fluctuations in interstate links at the macro-level and to develop a sense of community. (JCCA/GIGA)

Based on ethnographic research on Chinese migrants in Nigeria, Botswana, and Namibia from 2011 to 2015, this article has three lines of argumentation and contribution. First, it proposes a framing of migrant geographies from a humanistic comparative perspective in order to complement the political economy approaches in geographies of migration. Second, lying in the intersection of urban studies and migration studies, it illustrates the different positionalities of cities in three aspects of migrant geographies – migrant space, network, and belonging – echoing the multiscalar analysis of city-making in migration processes. Third, specifically in the context of Chinese migrant geographies, three African cities, Lagos, Gaborone, and Windhoek, are placed in three migrants' geographic worlds, not always according to their positions in multiscalar power structures, but partly through migrant experiences in which top-down power horizontally works.

Based on ethnographic research on Chinese migrants in Nigeria, Botswana, and Namibia from 2011 to 2015, this article has three lines of argumentation and contribution. First, it proposes a framing of migrant geographies from a humanistic comparative perspective in order to complement the political economy approaches in geographies of migration. Second, lying in the intersection of urban studies and migration studies, it illustrates the different positionalities of cities in three aspects of migrant geographies – migrant space, network, and belonging – echoing the multiscalar analysis of city-making in migration processes. Third, specifically in the context of Chinese migrant geographies, three African cities, Lagos, Gaborone, and Windhoek, are placed in three migrants' geographic worlds, not always according to their positions in multiscalar power structures, but partly through migrant experiences in which top-down power horizontally works. (JCCA/GIGA)

Fondé sur des recherches ethnographiques menées à Canton et Lagos, cet article examine deux processus de mobilité transnationale imbriqués : la migration d'entrepreneurs chinois au Nigeria et celle de commerçants nigérians en Chine. Les activités commerciales transnationales de ces petits entrepreneurs sont replacées dans une analyse de la mondialisation « par le bas », une mondialisation qui se déploie bien en deçà du champ de vision de l'État mais qui demeure néanmoins connectée aux pratiques étatiques. Les auteurs examinent les barrières institutionnelles auxquelles ces entrepreneurs font face dans leurs pays d'accueil, puis les stratégies qui les conduisent à développer des réseaux commerciaux transfrontaliers et transculturels en vue de faciliter les flux de personnes, de biens et d'information.