‘I'm more afraid of racism than of the virus!’: racism awareness and resistance among Chinese migrants and their descendants in France during the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the discrimination and racism experienced by Chinese migrants and their descendants during the Covid-19 pandemic. It analyses this group's increasing awareness and activism toward racial discrimination in French society. The paper is based on an empirical investigation using qualitative and quantitative research methods (online surveys and interviews) with people of Chinese origin living in France. In addition, qualitative data from news media and activists is also crucial to this study because of the important role they play in the social construction of the anti-racism movement. This study shows that the Covid-19 pandemic highlights how the discrimination and racism experienced by people of Chinese origin can take various forms. The epidemic has become a catalyst for Chinese immigration to resist racism, especially among descendants, and among more recent and highly-skilled Chinese immigrants, who have broken their silence, united, and participated in a more activist manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• Covid-19 pandemic
• Chinese migration
• France
• descendants
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term ‘Asian’ is a problematic generalization: in the French context, ‘Asians’ (‘Asiatiques’) historically refer to people coming from the ex-Indochinese countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) where some of those people were ethnically Chinese. Nowadays, the term ‘Asian’ includes people from East Asia and Southeast Asia and they are usually perceived as a homogeneous racial group. For more readings on the distinction between Chinese and other Asians and on the different subgroups within Chinese population in France, please see: Ma Mung 2000; Live 1993; Wang 2017.

2 In France, if the statistics published regularly on the epidemic are silent about infection and mortality rates of immigrants and their descendants, a study by INSEE shows that immigrants have an excess mortality higher than the majority population during the Covid-19 pandemic (Papon and Robert-Bobée 2020).

3 The MigraChiCovid Research Project (“Chinese migrations in France facing Covid-19: the emergence of new forms of solidarity in times of crisis”) is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-20-COVI-0046-01). Cf. the presentation of the project: https://www.migrations-asiatiques-en-france.cnrs.fr/projet-migrachicovid/resume-scientifique-du-projet-migrachicovid.

All authors are members of the MigraChiCovid Project. The authors gratefully acknowledge the opinions of anonymous reviewers of the journal, as well as the English language assistance provided by Sophie Haas for the final version of this article.

4 The on-line survey address: https://www.migrations-asiatiques-en-france.cnrs.fr/actualites/187-questionnaire-migrachicovid-migrations-chinoises-de-france-face-au-covid-19.

5 The AJCF Facebook page has also received messages from French spouses of Asian migrants who testify to the racist experiences of their family members.

6 The Facebook post unfortunately doesn’t exist anymore, but an afro-feminist activist shared its screenshots on Twitter.

7 In 2017, a Chinese newcomer was murdered in his home by a policeman.

8 For more information about discrimination and racism experienced by Chinese people and their descendants in France before the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, please see: Li 2019; Luu 2020; Wang 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agence Nationale de la Recherche: [Grant Number ANR-20-COVI-0046-01].

Notes on contributors

Simeng Wang

Simeng Wang is a Permanent Research Fellow at The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and faculty member at the CERMES3 Laboratory. Since 2009, she has been working on Chinese immigration in France, firstly about mental suffering and living conditions of Chinese migrants and their children. Her current work is built around two poles, the first at the intersection of migration and health issues; the second on the experiences of racism and discrimination among Southeast and East Asian origin peoples living in France. Currently she has been leading the MigraChiCovid Project (2020–2021) and the REACTAsie Project (2020–2022). Her scientific publications include Illusions and suffering. Chinese migrants in Paris (Éditions rue d'Ulm, 2017) and Chinese immigrants in Europe: image, identity and social participation (Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2020). She has also been the coordinator of the multidisciplinary research network on East and South-East Asian Migrations in France.

Xiabing Chen

Xiabing Chen is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Sorbonne University. His main research topics deal with the relational sociology, especially with the theories of G. Simmel. Empirically he analyses the exotic culture model in Paris restaurant market of the Chinese and Japanese owners.

Yong Li

Yong Li is a sociologist, post-doctoral fellow at the Triangle Laboratory, ENS de Lyon, France. He is research coordinator in the International Associated Laboratory “Post-Western Sociology in Europe and in China” CNRS-ENS de Lyon/CASS. He is also a fellow of the French Collaborative Institute on Migration. His research interests include student mobility, career paths of skilled migrants, experiences of discrimination and racism of people of Asian origin in France. He recently published: “Institutional Discrimination and Workplace Racism: A Double Roadblock in the Career Paths of Chinese Graduates in France,” Journal of Chinese Overseas, V16 N2 (forthcoming).

Chloé Luu

Chloé Luu graduated from the Social Sciences Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where she conducted a master thesis in Sociology about Asian representation in films and especially about French Asians' cinematic experience and the different ways they can share a similar one as they also share a similar social experience of being racialized as Asians in France. Her research interests cover more broadly Asian descent French people's living conditions, in their construction of identities and their experience of discrimination and racism, within a perspective of seeing them as people of color. She also writes about representations of race, gender, class minorities in pop-culture.

Ran Yan

Ran Yan graduated from the School of Management and Innovation of Sciences-Po Paris where she obtained a master's degree in communication. Since 2018 she is journalist based in France for the Hainan TV station in China. She has covered reports on cooperation and cultural events between France and China. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she reported on the collection of medical materials by alumni of Wuhan University in France. Besides, she is part of a Chinese student group, the AVE team who has produced a documentary on the discrimination that Chinese people have suffered in their daily lives after the spread of the Covid-19 virus in France. This documentary has had more than 22 million views. Her interests cover cultural difference, cooperation between China and France, as well as Chinese people in France.

Francesco Madrisotti

Francesco Madrisotti is a sociologist, post-doctoral fellow at the CERMES3 Laboratory (CNRS-EHESS-INSERM-University of Paris). His research interests include transnationals mobilities, economic activities and quantification of discrimination. Generally speaking, his research work aims to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches as well as algorithms and big data analysis techniques into the analysis of transnational mobility and discrimination.