Pratiques transnationales dans un comptoir de « la Route de la soie » : Algériens et Égyptiens à Yiwu (Chine)

• Main Authors: Saïd Belguidoum, Olivier Pliez
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Équipe Monde Arabe Méditerranée 2015-07-01
• Series: Les Cahiers d’EMAM
• Subjects: China; Arab World; Roads; Transnational Routes; Globalization
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/emam/927

Yiwu (China) is known as one of the biggest wholesale markets in the world. Both an industrial district and a cosmopolitan urban neighbourhood, this city of the Zhejiang province, South of Shanghai, three hours of train away from it, has positioned itself since the 2000s as one of the major starting places for the “new silk roads”, supplying in small commodities a vast part of the world’s market. This article aims at better understanding how a transnational trading post is built up on these routes, where the presence of Arab entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, translators, purchasers or migrants is set to become a permanent feature. It is an inconspicuous globalization that is shaping up, anchoring North Africa into the global networks of transnational exchanges.