While the general topic of Chinese economic influence in Africa is both well-studied and ongoing; this study seeks to further enhance the understanding of Chinese expatriate presence in Africa and its determinants. This paper will focus on several variables as determinants of flows of Chinese workers to SSAs, including Chinese exports to SSAs, labor rights, resource richness and institution quality, which will be applied to the Gravity Model of Immigration (Lewer and Van den Berg (2007). The paper briefly addresses the rise of China as an economic power and its presence in Sub-Saharan Africa as it applies to labor flows. I conduct an empirical analysis the Gravity Model of Immigration, utilizing the recent SAIS-CARI dataset on Chinese overseas employees in Africa from 2009-2018. I will test the following hypothesis: the flows of Chinese expatriate workers to SSAs are positively associated with the following factors

  1. trade exposure of SSAs to China
  2. the degree of resource-richness of SSAs 
  3. the degree of weakness of labor rights in SSAs. 
Presenting
Primary Speaker
Farr, Evan J.
Faculty Sponsors
Sener, Mehmet F.
Abstract Details
Faculty Department/Program
Economics
Faculty Division
Social Sciences
Presentation Type
Oral
Do You Approve this Abstract?
Approved
Schedule
Time Slot
9:40 AM
Room
Lippman 016
Topic
Economics
Session
1
Moderator
Stephen Schmidt