During the research I carried out in Paris and its inner suburbs over four years (from 2010 to 2014), I took on the simultaneous roles of Mandarin-French interpreter, intercultural and social mediator and social sciences researcher in a number of psychiatric health facilities caring for “Chinese migrants in Paris” in all their diversity. This enabled me to participate in medical consultations and intervene, sometimes even as a sociologist, within the limits of the freedom of expression permitted by my role as interpreter-mediator.1
To protect the privacy of the subjects in the sensitive context of psychiatric care, all the names of the people I met have been changed, in accordance with the practices of the population studied regarding their use of French or Chinese names. The majority of the younger subjects (children and adolescents) in fact have two names—one French and one Chinese. This system is partly a legacy from the past: in ancient China, there was a system of informal and formal (and sometimes ritual) forenames and surnames to refer to the same person. Thus, the same individual can have several names which are used depending on their age and status at the time of the events described, and in function to the work read and its publication date.2 This system links with the current practices in China today of giving the child a “nick-name” (小名) to be used within the family which differs from the “name” (大名) that appears in official records. My subjects were anonymised based on their own choices as observed during the research in different contexts of interaction. I ascertained the forename the subject used most often—French or Chinese—in order to assign the pseudonyms.
To avoid any risk of identification, the different institutions (care facilities, schools, etc.) have also been anonymised, while conserving any characteristics relevant to the sociological analysis. This also applies to the health professionals I encountered. But, because I sought to anchor this research in the Parisian landscape, I rarely changed the geographical location of the care facilities (detailed in terms of arrondissements [boroughs] and communes [municipalities]).
I am also endlessly grateful to my two thesis directors, Stéphane Beaud and Richard Rechtman, who, each in their own way, imparted to me their wisdom, scientific rigour and goodwill. I also extend my thanks to the other members of the thesis jury: Francine Muel-Dreyfus, François Héran, Mahamet Timera and Jean-Louis Rocca. I would like to thank my colleagues—from France, China and elsewhere—who supported me throughout this doctoral research; their advice, comments and corrections have been invaluable.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to those who helped to edit the French edition of this book: Florence Weber for her support, her lively intellectual curiosity and her pertinent comments; Lucie Marignac for believing in this work and her patience, Marie-Hélène Ravenel for her attentive proofreading and her many suggestions. I thank Éric Opigez for designing the maps and Émilie Frenkiel and Philippe Hamelin who reread my manuscript. For the English edition of this book, I would like to thank Dr. Liu Hong, editor Shu Chunyan, translator Jenefer Bonczyk, and the anonymous reviewers of Brill Editions.
Last but not least, I send my thoughts to my parents who gave me their blessing to study and become researcher in France, and to my daughter and husband.
The methodology is detailed in the introduction (p.1). For more details on my involvement in the field, on the conditions of possibility as regards the medical body, and on the linguistic constructions during meetings between psychiatric and sociological categories, see S. Wang, “Help us to understand your Chinese!” Conditions of the possibilities for legitimizing sociologists in a psychiatric setting”, 2016.
See Qian Xuequan, 钱雪泉, 姓名可以反映社会情况. 社会, 1982.