Division by countries of origin? Visualizing the spatial distributions of international migrants in Guangzhou, China

Abstract

Socio-spatial segregation of immigrants or other ethno-racial groups in Western cities has been extensively investigated. In the recent decades, China has also witnessed a substantial growth of international immigrants. In the city of Guangzhou, one of the most famous destinations in China for transnational migration, the spatial presence of international migrants has received scholarly attention, mostly focusing on single racial groups. In this study, we present two cartograms using cellphone data to visualize the spatial distributions of multiple groups of international migrants, namely, the African migrants, the European and North American migrants, and the Japanese and Korean migrants, in Guangzhou. The cartograms indicate that the spatial distributions of migrants from Africa and those from the European, North American, and East Asian countries are considerably divided in Guangzhou, suggesting a possible ethno-racial segregation among the international migrants in this Chinese city. Such an issue is largely under-researched in the existing literature.