Global Markets: Cartography of Vehicle Export Flows in US Auctions for Ghana and the United Arab Emirates

• Grant number: 24/05634-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2024
• End date: March 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Urban Sociology
• Agreement: ANR
• Principal Investigator: Bianca Stella Pinheiro de Freire Medeiros
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Lopes Silva
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 20/07160-7 - Global cars: a transnational urban research on vehicle informal economies (Europe, Africa and South America), AP.TEM

Abstract

Vehicle auctions are central markets for the global economies of used automobile distribution and consumption. However, social research has paid little attention to this object. After 3 years of carrying out the Global Cars research project, to which this plan is linked, we identified that cars sold at auctions in the United States and sent to Asia and Africa make up an important route in the formal and informal international used car market. This work plan will focus on exploring more data on the export of second-hand vehicles through auctions in the United States to the United Arab Emirates and subsequently to Ghana. In the first analysis, we seek to collect a chain of data established in cyberspace about these car auctions. The second stage, based on the construction of the bibliographic review, is based on the contextualization of some categorical elements of these auctions, identifying their specificities and distinct characteristics, seeking to frame which group(s) the analyzed vehicle auctions constitute. In this way, it is expected to offer informational tools on the dynamics of international export of vehicles used in US auctions to the Sharjah and Ghana markets, contributing to a more comprehensive and precise understanding of commercial interactions in the vehicular sphere between these territories and understanding the specificities of practice of exporting cars in the United States.