Lauréat Concours annuel 2026 de l'ARSOM : Cai CHEN : "Boundary Bricoleurs: Sino-Congolese Couples Navigating Intimacy and Difference in Postcolonial Congo"

Dans le cadre de concours annuel 2026 de l'Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer (ARSOM), la recherche doctorale de Cai CHEN, intitulée « Boundary Bricoleurs: Sino-Congolese Couples Navigating Intimacy and Difference in Postcolonial Congo » (sous la supervision d'A. Fresnoza-Flot) s’est vue couronnée par la Classe des Sciences humaines.

Le prix sera remis à l’occasion de la séance académique d’ouverture qui se déroulera le 15 octobre prochain au Palais des Académies (rue Ducale 1 – 1000 Bruxelles).

Boundary bricoleurs. Sino-Congolese couples navigating intimacy and difference in postcolonial Congo

China's expanding presence in Africa has drawn sustained attention from media, policymakers, and scholars. Yes existing research on Africa-China relations remains largely focused on macro-level economic, geopolitical, and developmental dynamics, leaving everyday people-to-people encounters underexplored. This doctoral research addresses this gap by examining Sino-African conjugal relationships—an overlooked form of intimate engagement—from below. Focusing on Sino-Congolese couples in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it shifts the analytical lens from China's global rise to the lived experiences of intimacy, difference, and power in a postcolonial African context. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2022 and 2024 with ten heterosexual Sino-Congolese couples across Kinshasa, Haut-Katanga, and Lualaba, the study explores how partners navigate relationships shaped by intersecting differences of nationality, race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and informal conversations, it conceptualizes these couples as "boundary bricoleurs" engaged in creactive, multilevel boundary work. As intimate partners, community brokers, and transnational actors, they negotiate asymmetric power relations, mobilize unequal resources, and reconfigure social boundaries in everyday life. By foregrounding conjugal mixedness in the Global South, this thesis offers fresh insights into the grassroots dynamics of Africa-China engagements and contributes to broader debates on intimacy, mobility, and the social organization of difference.

Voici une annonce que BelMix a fait sur son site web : https://belmix.hypotheses.org/10696