The religion of the Chinese in France – FRANCHIR

We combine various methodologies and concepts coming from the social sciences in the broadest sense.
- A historical approach: integrating social history, history of immigration, and history of the religious traditions, that is based on both archival material and oral history and relies on our research experience in China itself.
- An approach in sociology and social anthropology through field investigation and participant observation.

The expected theoretical outcome is a global vision of the religion of the Chinese living in a minority situation. Our definition of the religious in the present project is very broad, and includes practices that other researchers — and social actors — would not qualify as «religious«, because ideas and practices (concerning morality, good life, values) circulate between the «religious« and the «secular« spheres without losing their ability to give meaning to individuals and to social groups. In Chinese religion, the parts have limited meaning when considered separately from the whole. What we need to do is to demonstrate how true that is for religion in the context of immigration.

The anticipated concrete results:
- The synthesis of our field surveys will lead to a computerized data base of the Chinese religious sites and institutions in France, with both a freely accessible version and a version reserved for accredited users (scientists, political, social actors). A film on the history of the Religion of the Chinese in France is at planning stage.
- When our project comes to an end, we will organize an international symposium, in order to present the results of our research both to the scientific community and to the socio-political actors.
- We will publish two books aimed at a large audience. One work will be co-written, in French, by the core members of the project, presenting the history and the current situation of the religion of the Chinese in France. The other, in English, and based on the achievements of the comparative part of the research, will focus on replacing the French case in the framework of the religious transformations of the Chinese globalized society.

Through this project, we intend to elaborate factual knowledge and an analytical framework enabling us to answer the social as much as the scientific demand concerning the behaviors and the values of the fest-expanding Chinese population in France.

- Ji Zhe, « Territoires migratoires et lieux religieux : cartes des religions des Chinois en Île-de-France », in Lucine Endelstein, Sébastien Fath, et Séverine Mathieu (dir.), Dieu change en ville. Religion, espace, immigration, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010, p. 137-155.

- Pan Junliang, « Les protestants français et l’Asie : l’exemple des Chinois en France », in Sébastien Fath et Jean-Paul Willaime (dir.), La nouvelle France protestante. Essor et recomposition au XXIe siècle, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2011, p. 290-299.

- Hua Hua, «Study on the characteristics of the Protestant beliefs of Chinese students in Paris » (in Chinese, «Qingnian yanjiu», 6, 2009, p. 64-73.

In less than four decades and without receiving much outside notice, Chinese religion has settled in France. The number of sites for religious practice has risen spectacularly, including small shrines for Earth and Wealth gods in restaurants and other commercial venues; community temples for the worship of Buddhist, Daoist and local gods; Buddhist centers, mostly of the Great Vehicle tradition; and shrines of the various Chinese new religious movements. At the same time, a high number of Chinese Protestant churches expand and subdivide in a highly dynamic process. All of this has radically altered the situation that was prevalent up to the 1970s when Catholicism was the only religious identity publicly claimed by Chinese living in France. The reality of this religious expansion has gone unnoticed in the context of contemporary French society where issues of Chinese economic and demographic expansion get all the attention. And yet, it is a major phenomenon of religious transplantation creating new situations or religious coexistence, mixing and segregation between Chinese migrants and the host society.
Our project if the first comprehensive scholarly endeavor to understand current Chinese expansion from the religious perspective. The goal is to describe and analyze the process whereby Chinese religions transplant themselves from places such as Indochina, PRC and Taiwan into a new society, by taking historical, political, economical and social contexts into account. It encompasses a study of religious institutions and practices in the context of the migrant society, and of the role and influence of religion among Chinese populations living in France and their impact on French society.
The team that unites behind this project is multidisciplinary (including sociologists, anthropologists, and historians) and international; it masters very solid background knowledge of religion in Chinese contexts as well as ample experience in fieldwork in China itself, which are prerequisites for a successful research among the Chinese in France. We are not aware of any similar project in Europe. The existing scholarship on Chinese migrants in Europe hardly deals with the religious and cultural dimensions of migration, as it focuses on economical and socio-political issues. The scholarship on North-American Chinese has addressed religion to a larger extent. But, such research has mostly resulted in monographs focusing on one specific religious group. By contrast, the strength of our team is to cover the whole range of Chinese religious traditions (including Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, local and ethnic cults, new religious movements, etc.). This project therefore aims at building a comprehensive model for understanding Chinese religious practice, and to place the French case and French scholarship towards the center of the scholarly field of the study of current Chinese global expansion. Moreover, the project also aims to answer a social demand for a clear understanding of the role of religion among the fast-growing Chinese population in France, and its socio-cultural impact on French society. Our team has begun to elaborate a survey of all sites of religious practice among Chinese in the greater Paris area. We have now over thirty sites described, which constitutes a preliminary basis for building the present project. This allows us to sketch a map of Chinese religions showing hitherto unsuspected density and diversity. We now aim to jump from this preliminary survey to a full-fledged collaborative project based on in-depth fieldwork study of selected groups or specific practices. This will eventually result within three years in a comprehensive history and description taking into account the whole variety of religion among French Chinese. The analytical framework thus built will serve as a template for analyzing Chinese religious change in migrant contexts.