Abstract EN:

There has been a new wave of Chines arrivals since the end of the 1990s in France. These migrants are different from the typical figure of economic migrants and the majority of Chinese already settled in France. Most are middle-aged city dwellers who used to belong to middle stratum of rather privileged state enterprise employees and entrepreneurs in northern China. A majority (70%) is female, mostly divorced. They had to leave China as their privileged social status came under threat by the new elite supported by the government. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic work in France and in China, this study traces these migrants' trajectories long before their departure and analyses their motivations for leaving China temporarily. Focusing on the shifting of their migration projects provides an insight into the ways they handle tensions and adapt to macro and meso structural constraints either those resulting from economic reforms in China or from their irregular status in France. In the process they do not give up their individual or family expectations. In France, their social and professional careers reflect the tensions among Mandarin speakers' networks. Processes of marginalization and othering lead to their integration at the very bottom of these networks' social hierarchies. This situation raises question about the existence of a Parisian 'Chinese community' and 'Chinese diaspora'. Power relations and groups' dynamics in the migration context and dynamics of exclusion resulting from French legislation, give rise to two cumulative processes leading to a sharp reversal of previous hierarchies : deskilling and ascription of gendered stereotypes to migrants. Indeed, migrants' trajectories reveal a drastic sexual division of labour but also in the same time resourceful tactics with which they invest margins of French society. They have to adapt to new gender norms, both among the Mandarin speakers networks and in the French society. Women have hardly other alternative but to work in the domestic sector and some of them turn to prostitution or marry a local. In spite of their limited social mobility they find resource in a transnational social field. It helps them resist different forms of downward social mobility, either in China or in migration. The construction of strategic multi-positionality attests to the agency of North Chinese migrants in Paris.