Author: Karsten Giese, Alena Thiel.

Based on a two-sided ethnographic study in Accra, this paper analyses Chinese–Ghanaian employment relations from the perspectives of psychological contract, cross-cultural equity expectations and foreignness. Reaching beyond racially framed allegations of each other that are informed partly by politicized media discourses, structural analysis shows that mutually contradictory, culturally grounded expectations regarding their employment relationship are central to the understanding of conflict between Chinese employers and Ghanaian employees. Central to the frictions of mutual equity expectations is the feeling of existential vulnerability that – although particular for each group – is shared by both Chinese migrant employers taking high financial risks in an unfamiliar and potentially hostile environment and their local employees recruited almost exclusively from economically marginalized groups.