Dr Saheira Haliel (Birmingham) ‘Transnational Marriage and Trading Networks: Money, Trust and Cultural Differences’

Abstract:

Based on ethnographic research on transnational marriages between Chinese women and Muslim traders from Arab countries, South Asia and Africa in the Chinese trading city of Yiwu, in this article, I explore the role of transnational marriages in the activities and strategies of trading networks, through the lens of money and uncertainty in marriage. I argue that uncertainty in spousal relations challenges the durability of such unions and hence the effectiveness of their role in trading activities. These uncertainties are shaped by a range of factors, including the intertwining of spousal relations with commercial and social networks such as business partners, kinship and friendship; the differing cultural values and practices of the partners to such unions and the stereotypes that condition their perceptions of each other; varying forms and degrees of trust and mistrust, and the dynamics of global markets and state policy. Uncertainties driven by these factors exacerbate mistrust in both marriages and trading relations; they also shape shifting orientations toward future life. Therefore, I argue that the role of marriage in trading activities should be neither simplified nor romanticized.

Bio:

Dr Heila Sha (Saheira Haliel) is a Research Fellow and social anthropologist in Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) at the Coventry University. She works on South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub, with a focus on migration intermediaries.

Saheira completed her PhD at Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany in July 2015. Her PhD research focused on inter-generational transformations of family life, care, and gender relations in response to urbanization, migration and socio-economic transformations in Northwest China. Based on her PhD dissertation, she published her first book in 2017, titled Care and Ageing in Northwest China.

In April 2016, she joined University of Sussex (UK) as a postdoctoral research fellow. She was one of the members of ERC-funded project entitled “Yiwu: Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City” (TRODITIES). In this project, she extended her horizon to examining transnational lives, mobilities and networks in the context of international migration. She built further expertise in multi-sited methodologies that bridge scales to connect globally diverse localities within transnational trading networks and commodity markets, examining the relationship between gender, enterprise and transnational marriage in the context of global trade liberalization. She also expanded her fieldwork experience, conducting ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in the global small commodity trading centre of Yiwu, a city on China’s East Coast, using multiple languages to interview both Chinese citizens and foreign traders from the Global South including the Middle-East, Central Asia, Africa and South Asia. Based on this project, she published several articles in leading journals, such as:

 Sha, Heila, 2020, Transnational Marriage in Yiwu: tensions over money, in Special Issue: Beyond Trust - Reputation, Plura-Activity and the Durability of Networks in Trans-Asian Commerce, Journal of Global Networks, 20,4 (2020): 766-784

Sha, Heila, 2020, Transnational Marriage in Yiwu: trade, settlement and mobility, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46 (11): 2326-2345

Selected Publications:

Book:

Sha, Heila, 2017, Care and Ageing in Northwest China, LIT (Berlin, Zurich),

paperback: 336 pages; language: English; ISBN-13: 978-3643908742

Journal Articles:

Sha and Bhuiyan, 2021, “Amar beton khub e kom”: The role of commercial recruitment intermediaries in reproducing gendered and racialized inequalities, ZANJ Special Issue: Migration and (in) equality in the Global South: intersections, contestations and possibilities

Sha, Heila, 2020, Transnational Marriage in Yiwu: tensions over money, in Special Issue: Beyond Trust - Reputation, Plura-Activity and the Durability of Networks in Trans-Asian Commerce, Journal of Global Networks, 20,4 (2020): 766-784

Sha, Heila, 2020, Transnational Marriage in Yiwu: trade, settlement and mobility, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46 (11): 2326-2345

Working Papers:

Sha, Heila, 2021, Migrant networks as social capital: the social infrastructure of migration, MIDEQ Working Paper. Coventry: MIDEQ.

Sha, Heila 2021, Migration intermediaries and inequalities: A literature review, MIDEQ Working Paper. Coventry: MIDEQ.

Jones and Sha 2020, Mediated migration: A literature review of migration intermediaries, MIDEQ Working Paper. Coventry: MIDEQ

Link to seminar on MS Teams