What is it about?
The paper deals with Chinese transnational sex labour migration in the city of Douala, Cameroon. The essay demonstrates how the development in this central African city of what can be called Chinese sexoscapes has reconfigured the local geography of commercialized sex work, which for so long was dominated by the native Duala sex workers who have always claimed special rights on the local prostitution business on the grounds that they were autochthon populations.
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Why is it important?
By focusing on a ‘global South city’, which is rarely taken into account by the mainstream literature on transnational urban processes and global sex labour migration, the present contribution does not only intend to fill this academic gap. It also aspires to extend scholarly debates on transnational urbanism, global economy of prostitution, and gender and body commoditization beyond the dominant ‘global North’ framework.
Perspectives
This work is a strong reminder that many African metropolises are slowly moving from the position of regular providers of cheap bodies and sex of their destitute populations to the western developed world, to that of primary destinations of many transnational migrant sex workers who increasingly see Africa as a place for making fast buck.
Professor Basile Ndjio
Institute for Advanced Study
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sex and the transnational city: Chinese sex workers in the West African city of Douala, Urban Studies, March 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0042098015619140.
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