Les Chinois au Royaume-Uni, ou l'illusion de l'immigration choisie

Résumé 0

The Chinese in the United Kingdom, or the Illusion of Selective Immigration Ethnographic research conducted in both China and the United Kingdom shows that the public policy of the British state in the area of immigration is not a rigid constraint externally imposed on migrants. On the contrary, it is incorporated by the latter into their strategies, which leads them to migratory, employment and survival practices that produce the social phenomena (false asylum claims, illegal work, etc.) against which the aforementioned public policy claims to act. Far from reflecting the individual qualities possessed by a given candidate for migration, moreover, screening criteria (legal residence, educational background and so on) are merely administrative statuses supplied to clients by professionals in China and the United Kingdom in exchange for hard cash. Official rhetoric concerning “selective” migration only results in limiting the number of entrants, with no effect on their “quality”. Finally, it turns out that Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom tends to leave the ethnic sector and enter a “neo-proletarian” sector that plays a transitional role on the road to integration into the mainstream labor market, although conditions are sometimes more difficult for employees there. ■