Description of the integration initiative implemented
- language learning in community associations;

- self-training in professional skills;

- community support as resources for job hunting and housing solution;

- work opportunity as key to get the legal residence permit and thus the integration

Personal story
Born in the late 1960s, Yun comes from a province in the north of China which used to be an important industry base with numerous state owned factories. In the late 1990s, under the politic of privatization, these factories closed their doors and sent thousands of thousands workers to the unemployment situation. Yun was one of them. She used to be a manager in the state owned factory, as her husband. When she thinks about her stay in France and her work as a sashimi cook in a small town near Paris, she said: when I was in China, I never touched the knife. I was a manager; I don’t need to cook because my mother-in-law took care of everything. Since I was the youngest child in my family, my two elder sisters and my parents took all the housework and kitchen work.

After several years of unemployment, she tried several work abroad, in order to “get a better life for her family and for her son” who was only 6 years old when she left China for the first time. Four years later, she decided to come to France when she heard that those who came earned more money. In 2005, she paid for a business trip to France and stayed after the expire date of her visa. She planned to stay for 3 years just to earn enough money for improve their family financial situation: pay for the medical fees for her husband and the studies for her son.

Thus, Yun was in an illegal situation. In the first 3 years, she worked for a Chinese family as nanny. She didn’t speak a word of English and knew nothing about French language when she arrived in France. She tried to learn French from the 3 kids she babysitted and when she managed to progress in her vocabulary and daily life communication, she decided to find another work: housekeeper for the hostels.

Thanks to one friend coming from the same province of her, she began to work and learned to work in a nail bar. The nail bar workers share a shop with the hair salon and they need to pay 50% of their sales turnover to the owner of the hair salon. The hair salons in this quartier of Paris are known as a concentrated hair salon specialized in African style. Yun was and is still very angry about how they were treated by the salon owners. The nail workers are mostly illegal migrants as Yun and they are used to “suffer in silence”. They are not paid in time, neither with the promised salary. When they get controlled and arrested by the police, they need to pay the lawyer by themselves so that they can walk out of the detention center. And the salon owners prefer to hire other “new” illegal migrants than to take them back, so they lose their job too.

There are reasons for which Yun made up her mind to learn French. Firstly, at this moment, she felt very bad that she couldn’t even argue or express herself in French with the salon owners or with the clients. She would like to have a fight in French with them, as fluently as when she argues in Chinese. Another reason is that she needed to hire an interpreter for any administrative procedures since she could barely speak French and read no words. Sometimes she felt betrayed by the interpreters who care more the money than her interests and didn’t even bother to defend her. She can also feel the disregard from some interpreters.

She spent all her spare time to learn French in one association held by Chinese. She had 4 classes a week and went to the classes before her work during more than 3 years.

Even she hadn’t barely cook or cut the food in China, she followed the advice of one of her friend coming from the same city of her. She joined him in the Japanese restaurant where he works as chief and helped his boss to hire a sashimi chief.

For Yun, it was a big challenge. In the begging she would like to work as a kitchen clerks and take a low salary. Her friend convinced her to this better paid and skillful position. She is left-handed and trained herself to be right-handed when she cut the sashimi, simple because one set of left-handed sashimi knives worth too much investment and the available knife sets in most of the restaurant are right-handed.

“I cried for more than one week. I felt bad about myself. Look at my age, I came here in France and I cannot choose what I want to do”. For Yun, the only way out is trained herself in her spare time so that she can manage to deserve the sashimi chief position. For her, the only belief that supports her is that she can offer a “better life” to her family. Her determination to learn French and learn sashimi work touched a lot her boss, who decided to help her get the residence permit after she spent 2 years working for him and proved that she can be a good sashimi chief and a rare woman sashimi chief.

After they submitted the application, Yun was controlled and arrested on her way to work. Her boss paid a lawyer to defend her case and she managed to get her first temporary residence permit in 2013, almost 10 years after her arrival in France.

However, this temporary residence permit lasted only for 3 months and she needed to renew for more than one year and half, until one day, her demand of renew was denied and no reason was given. Her boss asked her to continue to work as before and she hired a lawyer for her defense. They had to wait for one year to apply again for a residence permit and she finally got her one year’s residence permit in 2016.

Nowadays, she is having a four years’ residence permit and wants to work until she can get a 10 years’ permit. For her, it never comes to her mind to stay in France forever. Return to China is always in her plan, but remains postponed every time. Firstly, she wanted to stay for 3 years. When her son grew up and they needed to pay the fee for his studies, she stayed, for his studies in middle school, then in high school, then in university. When her son got graduated from university and found a job, she planned to do savings for her son’s apartment. Even she had spent years in the apartments where she paid for one room without any contract.

During all these years’ struggle, for Yun, marring a French to get the resident permit is never in her thoughts. She admits that it’s easier to get the card but much more difficult to get rid of the marriage. Some of her acquaintances complained that they are not allowed to work as they used to or want to after the marriage that gives them the legal permit. It’s a price too expensive: when you are illegal, you can work; once you get the permit by marriage, you lose your job.



Her perspective now is go back to China one day after getting her 10 years’ residence permit. But she is aware that she can difficultly integrate in her family’s life after 16 years living in another country. Since she is not having a grand-child, she feels having no obligation to go back to China to take care of her son’s family. The most important reason lies on the labor market in China for the women of her age: “I cannot really find a job if I go back to China at my age in my 50s.” She doesn’t want to feel useless again. She talked about staying in France, quit the actual job that makes her work 6 days a week, find the temporary job and become a volunteer in the associations/NGOS to help people. As for her husband, he is absent in her story and in her perspective as if he doesn’t exist.

When it comes to her work, she knows that she might not get the same recognition nor the same position if she goes back to China: her boss paid the taxi, and then after the hotel for 2 months during the Covid pandemic in 2020 so that she could work in the restaurant without being troubled by the cancelled train from Paris to the small city where she works. After her sick leave last summer, her boss rent an apartment near the restaurant and she shares it with other 2 women employees working for another restaurant. They can stay free of charges. It goes far beyond the better life for her family and her son: Yun can get rid of the possible unemployment situation that hunted her for years in China and earn her own life as before when she was mid-level manager in the factory.

Analysis of the initiative and individual story
Please give an in depth analysis through a multidisciplinary approach (social sciences, political sciences, law, medical studies, economy etc.)



Despite the residence permit for which Yun has fight for almost ten years, Yun gets a bitter feeling about her stay in France, especially when it comes to work choices or life choices. She had to do the low paid job, suffered the exploitation from both her employers and from some coming from the same country of her. All these are considered banal since she was in an illegal situation.

She herself pointed the contradiction of the public policies: her work in the restaurant is declared and both her boss and she paid the taxes, even she had no residence permit during several years. She as an illegal worker but taxpayer is tolerated, but not in other roles. She remembered she paid more than one month’s salary for her income tax, even though she was not allowed to work since she didn’t have any residence permit.

Her motif to come to France evolves in years, even Yun didn’t present it like this. She placed the interest of her son at first but still the recognition she obtained little by little in her French language et sashimi cutting technique enables her to get out of the traditional categories for the women: wife, mother taking care of the family. For her story, what matters in her integration, if there is any, it’s she as a worker. Illegal migrant situation only restraint her choices and enhance the difficulties she has in the labor market in France as a woman: she can barely get other jobs as illegal woman migrant not speaking a word of French but only in the services such as nails bar, babysitting, housekeeping or kitchen clerks.

Going back to China and to a life where her values as worker would be denied in the labor market as a woman in her 50s without university qualification. Her role as wife and mother and later grand-mother would be constantly reminded by the social norms. In this way, we can understand better her determination to get her autonomy in her story since the beginning: learn French, work opportunities and self-training in professional skills. We would like to point out in the end that Yun belongs to one generation that is born in the 60s and educated in the context where the gender legality was in the ideology and in the real life under Chairman Mao, especially in the labor markets. She worked and lived without cooking for her family or her husband: the work that she did in France to earn her living, and with which she managed to become the financial support of her family as it was before.

Results and Impact
- language learning leads to more autonomy;

- professional skills facilitate job hunting for an illegal migrant in the labor market;

- informal communities and ties from the Chinese people can be ambivalent: they can provide help and supports such as housing or job, but sometimes it comes with abuse, exploitations or misguiding information;

- Can we talk about integration in her case? When she never really plans to stay forever in France but still choses to stay? In which way she has succeed her integration and in which way she is not?