Grassroots Globalization in the Twenty-First Century’s First 15 Years: New Immigrant Communities in the Political Economy of Asia and Africa

Abstract

Approximately 90% of contemporary urbanization is occurring in the developing world. The growing clusters of settlement in Southeast Asia, China, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia present numerous local challenges of urban services provision, political development, and cultural change, while at the same time presenting surprisingly new global dilemmas. The simultaneous rise of developing Asia and developing (Sub-Saharan) Africa have provided opportunities for what I call here “grassroots globalization” and the creation of new immigrant communities for which locally oriented planners have little precedent. This chapter describes the political economy driving a new type of “twenty-first Century Urban Pioneer”, who takes advantage of the connections and complementarities between Asia and Africa that have become commonplace. Examining Chinese communities across the African continent, and an emergent Nigerian immigrant community in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, this chapter sheds light on a kind of grassroots and global immigration pattern that stands to increase significantly in the future, with practical implications for planners and policy-makers. Beyond these implications, grassroots globalization suggests that urban centers in Europe and North America no longer mitigate globalization, and any contemporary description of “World Cities,” or “Global Cities,” must incorporate an understanding of nontraditional, new immigrant communities.