In her talk, Miriam Driessen explores the dynamics of labour migration from China to Africa, which, heralded by Beijing’s ‘going out’ policy and the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000, took off in the early 2000s and has since grown substantially. ‘What drives so many Chinese men to Africa?’ is the question Miriam tries to unravel by looking through the three lenses of labour, social security, and gender. By doing so, she links salient economic, social, and demographic change in mainland China to Chinese labour migration to Africa.

Miriam Driessen is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is trained as an anthropologist. Her research focuses on migration in mainland China and beyond.