Nurturing networks: Women's management of BRI generated capital in the Sino-Kazakh border region

Capital generated by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects local networks, however, little is known about how it transforms these local networks. This knowledge is nevertheless important in order to assess the trickle-down effects of the BRI and, more broadly, its feasibility in specific local contexts.

 

Based on 16 months of ethnographic field research in one of the main Belty and Road Initiative (BRI) hubs, Verena La Mela studied how women sustain BRI capital by converting money into enduring social relationships, which secure social support in times of uncertainty. In doing so, she extends the conversation about the BRI as a transformative agent of local networks by adding a temporal dimension to the discussion.

 

 

Verena La Mela, M.A., is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. She is also a researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation funded project “ROADWORK: An Anthropology of Infrastructure on China's Inner Asian Borders” (https://roadworkasia.com/).

 

Rachel Silvey is the Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute and Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. She is a Faculty Affiliate in CDTS, WGSI, and the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle. Professor Silvey is best known for her research on women’s labour and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development. Her major funded research projects have focused on migration, gender, social networks, and economic development in Indonesia; immigration and employment among Southeast Asian-Americans; migration and marginalization in Bangladesh and Indonesia; and religion, rights and Indonesian migrant women workers in Saudi Arabia.