Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Chinese migrants are playing increasingly large, stratified roles in the informal economies of South America. One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon is in the region's largest informal economy of counterfeit and smuggled goods, spanning from Ciudad del Este, the Paraguayan border city, to São Paulo, Brazil's largest metropolis. Here, Chinese vendors, on the one hand, are some of the most marginalized workers facing a doubly difficult landscape due to their precarious immigration status and their illegal economic activities. They bear the brunt of working on the margins of the law, and as a result do not always reap the benefits of their own labor. A transnational elite of Chinese businesspeople, on the other hand, profits and profiteers from the booming market. They leverage their economic, social, and political power to bend the law to their favor and get away with irregularities, violations, and criminal behavior. In Beyond Informality Douglas de Toledo Piza reveals the complex ways these actors interact with each other, and how the law shapes those interactions. He argues that structural inequalities in the global economy push Chinese migrants to South America, while placing them, surprisingly, in positions to overhaul markets and tip the scales of deep-seated power structures in the Global South.
"Drawing on extensive ethnography, this book demonstrates the importance of popular markets in transnational commodity circuits, focusing on how Chinese business people redefine the uses of legality in the capitalist accumulation of wealth." —Verónica Gago, University of Buenos Aires
"[Beyond Informality's] use of multiple archival sources and grounded, long-term ethnographic fieldwork makes the book particularly valuable for those seeking thoughtful, nuanced perspectives on global China, especially in the context of the role of Chinese migrants in popular economies of the so-called 'Global South.'" —Carol Chan, The China Quarterly
"Beyond Informality makes a substantial contribution to migration studies and provides a compelling example of theoretically informed, situated research, written in a clear and engaging style." —Carla De Tona, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"Piza's illumination of a border as a social relation allows us to consider not only how a border comes into being, but also how it gains meaning in people's everyday lives." —Laura A Orrico, Social Forces
Preface: Beyond Borders
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Informality, Accumulation, Capture
1. The Making of a Commercial Borderland: Overseas Chinese Importers in a Trade Outpost
2. Capturing Wealth: Chinese Vendors, Shifting Legality, and Shopping Tourism in São Paulo
3. Entrepreneurialism from Afar: Engaging Migrants' Associations and Implementing China's Trade Policies
4. Spaces of Illegality, Tactics of Legibility: Cross-Border Mobility and Translocal Emplacement
Conclusion: Subverting Exploitation
Translation Glossary
Notes
References
Index