Troubled belongingness: Chinese immigrants and their descendants in the faced of the covid-19 epidemic in France

Chinese immigrants and their descendants in France have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in several respects. Independently of the inconveniences to which, in this context of crisis, they have been subjected together with the rest of the population, they have been confronted with stigmatizing behaviors and sometimes rejection and racism, a source of unease for many of them. Moreover, caught between the habitually anti-Chinese discourse of the media and the triumphant rhetoric of the Chinese government concerning the fight against the virus, their self-representations and sense of belonging have been undermined. In this article, we document the processes at work in the fabrication of public health stigmatization and reconstruct the manner in which our interlocutors have positioned themselves in terms of their identity and belonging. In doing so, we rely on a series of qualitative interviews conducted during the first confinement in France, the content of which was confirmed by news excerpts. In this context of crisis, those interviewed revealed personal experiences that varied depending on the nature of their relationship to China. Our goal is to examine the various forms taken by this feeling of belonging vis-a-vis the categories conveyed in interactions with majority society and the media. © 2021 Presses de Sciences Po. All rights reserved.