International Development Planning Review
Of corridors and chains: translocal developmental impacts of academic mobility between China and Germany
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of transnational geographical mobility among Chinese and German
scholars using the concepts of 'development corridors' and 'development chains'. A temporal-spatial
analysis of two case studies – (1) a multi-generation actor-based network of social scientists and (2) the
vibrant connections between the Department of Geography at the Sun Yat-Sun University of Guangzhou
and various German institutes – illustrates how seemingly individual, isolated and temporary episodes
of academic mobility can, through interacting with factors ranging from unforeseen events to framework
conditions, lead to chains of events that produce, reshape, strengthen, weaken or even erase corridors of
knowledge production and exchange. Both cases demonstrate the need to view geographical mobility
and its relationship to development beyond national and transnational frameworks, and the need to
pay attention to translocal and highly contextualised processes that shape and are being shaped by the
multiple elements of the mobility-development nexus.