The vulnerable other – distorted equity in Chinese–Ghanaian employment relations

Abstract

Based on a two-sided ethnographic study in Accra, this paper analyses Chinese–Ghanaian employment relations from the perspectives of psychological contract, cross-cultural equity expectations and foreignness. Reaching beyond racially framed allegations of each other that are informed partly by politicized media discourses, structural analysis shows that mutually contradictory, culturally grounded expectations regarding their employment relationship are central to the understanding of conflict between Chinese employers and Ghanaian employees. Central to the frictions of mutual equity expectations is the feeling of existential vulnerability that – although particular for each group – is shared by both Chinese migrant employers taking high financial risks in an unfamiliar and potentially hostile environment and their local employees recruited almost exclusively from economically marginalized groups.

Keywords:

• labour relations
• equity
• psychological contract
• trade
• China
• Ghana

Notes

1. Research for this publication has been conducted as part of the ongoing project ‘Entrepreneurial Chinese Migrants and Petty African Entrepreneurs – Local Impacts of Interaction in Urban West Africa’ funded by the DFG Priority Programme ‘Adaptation and Creativity in Africa’.

2. According to International Labour Organization (ILO 2008) statistics, average monthly wages in Ghana's retail and wholesale trade are around GH¢70–120 (Ghana cedis) (with higher wages being paid in the wholesale segment), thus often formally undercutting the legal minimum daily wage currently fixed at GH¢3.73 (approx. US$2.50).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karsten Giese

KARSTEN GIESE is Senior Research Fellow at GIGA Institute of Asian Studies.

Alena Thiel

ALENA THIEL is Junior Research Fellow at GIGA Institute of African Affairs.