Africatown in Guangzhou as geosemiotic assemblage: connecting multilingualism, store signs, and chronotopes

Abstract Using the social-spatial notions of geosemiotic assemblage and chronotope, this participatory ethnographic case study examines the intersection of store signs in the Africatown in Guangzhou and transnational African migrants’ meaning-making and place-making practices. Data collection is employed through a combination of traditional and participatory ethnographic methods including visual texts, interviews, and virtual field observations with fieldnotes. Findings from this study indicate the Africatown as geosemiotic assemblage, which echoes the principle in human geography that material and social environments are imbued with meanings in daily practices. The Africatown as geosemiotic assemblage is a multifaceted and dialogic process in which meanings, perceptions, multi-senses, and symbols are tied together to a locality. This study illustrates that the African migrants’ perceptions of the Africatown are mediated by both material and social environments. Specifically, African migrants are able to engage in multilingual social practices with both non-human artefacts and humans, placing great emphasis on spatiality in their reconceptualization of Africatown as more than a local African migrants’ hub. This study further demonstrates that the materials assembled in the African migrants’ milleu are historical, social, cultural, and multilingual in facilitating their reconstruction of the Africatown’s transnational space and African migrants’ identities. This study argues that a geosemiotic assemblage approach is salient in expanding current understandings of multilingual and transnational research by foregrounding materiality in meaning-making and place-making practices.