Social Integration and Perceptions of Racism among Chinese Immigrants in France: Findings from the Chinese Immigrants in the Paris Region (ChIPRe) Study

We describe the heterogeneity of the Chinese immigrant population in France and investigate how immigrants’ diverse patterns of social integration predict perceptions of racism, using survey data and in-depth interviews collected during the COVID-19 outbreak, a period during which anti-Chinese and anti-Asian xenophobia and racism were activated. Our unique data, collected for the Chinese Immigrants in the Paris Region (ChIPRe) Study, enable a classification of Chinese immigrants at the intersection of their migration histories, socio-demographic profiles, broad social integration indicators, and attributes of their social ties that characterize distinct patterns of social interaction with co-ethnics and with the wider French society. Our classification highlights three distinct groups: an established ethnic enclave of Wenzhou Chinese, an immigrant underclass whose members arrived in France after the dismantling of China’s centrally planned economy, and successive cohorts of international students, many of whom have gained professional employment in France or intend to stay in France after graduation from institutions of higher education. These distinct immigrant profiles predict different frequencies of subjective experiences of racism that are not attributable to the conventional predictors of racism perceptions alone and add nuance to the discrepancy between conventional social integration indicators and discrimination and racism found among the main immigrant groups and their children in many European countries.