Chinese Immigrants Acting as Local Residents

Abstract

Urban violence and threats to personal safety are everyday issues of shared concern for Chinese migrants in France. They push Chinese migrants to act as local residents and to interact with the host country in various and unexpected ways, whether openly or inconspicuously, in order to improve their living environment and negotiate their place in the host society. Drawing on an ethnography of Chinese immigrants living in the banlieues of Paris and their everyday social practices in relation to the issues of violence and insecurity, this article documents the strategies of everyday resistance used by Chinese immigrants, grounded in their local knowledge. In a shift toward further local participation, they perform these actions as local residents, resulting in a de facto citizenship.