1. Introduction

1Drawing on the experiences of women from East and Southeast Asia—either first-generation migrant or migrant descendant women—from the middle and upper classes, this article examines how these women became aware of the intertwined social dynamics of race and gender and engaged in fighting these interlocking forms of minoritization. Building on an intersectional approach to political engagement (Garcia 2012, Direnberger and El-Shikh 2023, Karimi 2023), we demonstrate how migratory trajectories, in addition to class, gender, and racial positions, contribute to shape experiences of minoritization among college-educated young women of Asian descent and their relation to the political. Here, “the political” is understood in a broad sense and refers to individuals’ relation to the world and to politics (Druez and Durand 2024: 549). The focus is on the process through which individuals become conscious of their own minoritization and how this awareness leads them to become involved in and take a stand on the fundamental conflicts that structure society—a process that Duchesne and Haegel call “conflictualization” (2003). Our hypothesis posits the existence of different trajectories by which individuals develop an awareness of social dynamics of domination and the ways of integrating feminism and anti-racism. We propose a typology based on the temporalities and spaces of awareness development, drawing on the biographies of the women of Asian descent surveyed.

2It is important to note that, in the French context, the “Asian” category is rooted in a process of othering fundamentally intertwined with the history of French imperialism and colonialism (Gandon and Wang 2023). People from East and Southeast Asia, regardless of their country of origin, are mostly viewed as a discrete and non-assertive community, despite historical accounts documenting over a century of “protest” and even “revolt” by Chinese and Indochinese workers (Dornel 2023, Luguern et al. 2023). In the 2010s, demonstrations against racism were organized by working-class people of Asian descent (Chuang 2017, Li, Hayakawa and Wang 2023). More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic (Wang and Madrisotti 2023), a “new Asian anti-racism” emerged, inspired by the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) and decolonialism, and led by a group of young, educated first-generation migrants and descendants from East and Southeast Asia (Luu and Zhou-Thalamy 2022). Within this movement, the “Asian” category has increasingly been acknowledged and adopted by activists. This political identity has developed in opposition to the universalism and systemic racism of French institutions, much like other minority identities such as “Black” and “Arab,” as described by Vietnamese-born journalist and anti-racist activist Linh-Lan Dao (Dao 2025).

3Nevertheless, the life trajectories of politically engaged young people of Asian descent remain largely unexplored and are rarely studied in French social sciences even though several key questions need to be addressed. What biographical and reflexive processes lead socially privileged young Asians to become politicized around social relations of race and gender? How have they developed their relations to feminist and anti-racist critique? How does a greater awareness of intertwined power dynamics influence their perception of the world, their political stance, and their daily political engagement? These questions have significant scientific and political implications, particularly given the fact that Asians are kept invisible in French public discourse, which is mainly centered on the conflict between French society and North-African immigration and the “Christianity-Islam” axis (Lamont 2001, Pingault 2004, Hajjat and Mohammed 2016). This invisibility may influence the ways in which young people of Asian descent are politically socialized and the forms of their political (non)engagement (Santarromana and Wang 2023). To understand the attitudes of young people of Asian descent toward various forms of minoritization, a closer investigation is needed of the mechanisms, agents, institutions, and contexts of their political socialization (Bargel and Darmon 2017, Bargel 2009).

4This article focuses on women’s trajectories of politicization, based on a segment of research that highlights the combined effect of gender and class on racial awareness and political engagement among individuals of Asian descent (Wang and Madrisotti 2023, Wang et al. 2023). Our study also stems from the observation that, over the past decade, several middle- and upper-class women of Asian descent, such as Linh-Lan Dao, Grace Ly, and Julie Hamaïde, have become prominent figures in postcolonial and decolonial anti-racist struggles (Humbert Wozniak 2019, Wang 2023). This approach allows us to re-examine the concept of intersectionality (Collins and Bilge 2020), which serves as a reflexive tool, a political practice for social actors (Chun, Lipsitz and Shin 2013, Roth 2021), and a conceptual framework for researchers seeking a deeper understanding of a social reality (Direnberger and El-Shikh 2023). In France, the intersectional perspective has been applied to study the trajectories of minoritized activists, primarily in the case of Muslim women fighting against racism, sexism, and Islamophobia (Direnberger and El-Shikh 2023, Garcia 2012, Karimi 2023). By focusing on middle- and upper-class women of Asian descent, this article seeks to avoid “reducing social power dynamics to their dominated aspect” (Trawalé 2018: 23) by instead paying attention to the experiences of individuals in ambivalent positions: privileged in terms of social class but minoritized in other respects (Dazey et al. 2024).

5Most existing research on political engagement among people of Asian descent in France focuses on collective movements (Chuang 2017, Wang 2019), whereas our contribution seeks to introduce a process-oriented perspective on the political engagement of minorities (Fillieule 2001). Within the triad of “socialization-awareness-politicization,” socialization provides the foundation for an individual’s development. Dispositions internalized in the past serve as a filter for experiences encountered and internalized later (Darmon 2023) and largely determine whether and how an individual becomes conscious of social dynamics of domination and engages politically. Our main emphasis is on the processes of racial socialization (Brun 2022, Blassel 2021) and political socialization.

6The first section presents the data collected through the REACTAsie survey and sheds light on the specific characteristics of the women politicized around the race and gender issues examined here. The second section examines the different trajectories by which these middle- and upper-class women develop a consciousness of race and gender dynamics. The final section suggests a typology of different trajectories toward awareness of social relations and highlights the main contributions of the article.

2. Empirical data from the REACTAsie survey and profiles of politically engaged Asian women

8Even though the research and action components were carried out independently—participation in one did not determine participation in the other—several respondents decided to participate in the project’s action component, which was a five-episode video miniseries posted on social media. Two of the respondents, Amélie and Mia (see below), were cast in two episodes of the miniseries. Our analysis is based not only on the statements collected during their interviews, but also on their actions and discourses during the filming of the miniseries.

10First-generation migrant and descendant women from various countries and regions share experiences of both racist and sexual/gender-based violence, which distinguishes them from their male counterparts. This violence often takes the form of harassment and assault in public (verbal slurs, leering, and verbal and physical violence), or sexual harassment in the workplace. In the interviews, respondents also highlighted the link between stereotypical representations and the fetishization of Asian women’s bodies in the intimate sphere, particularly in romantic relationships (see the cases of Selma and Amélie below). However, only a minority of the women surveyed considered race and gender to be fundamental dividing lines in society and advocated for simultaneously fighting against these two structural dynamics of domination.

11This article focuses on this minority of women, who are politically engaged with race and gender issues, and identifies three distinct profiles among them. The first group comprises the daughters of working-class migrants from Wenzhou who subsequently achieved upward social mobility. Wenzhou is a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang Province in eastern China. Migration of unskilled labor from this region increased in the 1980s, fueling the ethnic labor market in France and forming the foundation of diaspora entrepreneurship (Yun, Lévy and Poisson 2006, Poisson 2005). Members of Wenzhou families (husbands, wives, and sometimes the eldest children) were often separated during migration and arrived in France in stages. Many of their descendants recount how their early years in France were marked by significant administrative and social instability, but their parents later achieved upward economic mobility (Wang 2017). The second group includes the daughters of Southeast Asian refugees, who belonged to the social elite in their country of origin prior to emigration, acquired French citizenship, and attained middle-class status in France (Meslin 2023). The third group consists of first-generation migrants from the middle or upper classes in their countries of origin, who have a more cosmopolitan background and often came to France for higher education after the 2000s (Li and Wang 2021).

3. Three trajectories toward race and gender awareness among middle- and upper-class first-generation migrants and descendants

12This section investigates the trajectories by which politically engaged Asian women gained an awareness of social relations of race and gender. Although today all these racialized women hold positions at the top of the social hierarchy, their trajectories differ significantly in terms of social class of origin and generation of migration.

3.1. Early awareness of gender dynamics and late awareness of race dynamics among migrant descendants from working-class backgrounds

13For these descendants, growing up in France and being exposed to gendered forms of racialization did not imply simultaneous development of anti-sexist and anti-racist consciousness. Using an ideal-typical approach, we identified a first type of trajectory characterized by an early awareness of gender dynamics and a late awareness of race dynamics.

14This is what Selma experienced. She was born in Paris in 1983 and is an online content creator. Her parents are economic migrants from Wenzhou, China, who came to France in the 1980s. As the eldest daughter, Selma grew up surrounded by sewing machines and merchandise. She had to help her parents with their work, do housework, assist them with administrative tasks, and take care of her little brother as well. She describes her mother as sexist and her relatives as being only interested in money. Her family did not allow her to pursue a higher education and pressured her to marry a Chinese man.

15Deeply affected by these difficult living conditions, Selma became aware of her status as the daughter of immigrants at a very early age. Her story shows how, during her adolescence, the desire to break free from the traditional gender norms of her social environment and to distance herself from her family led her to reject patriarchy and, by extension, her Asian identity. Selma wanted to build her life according to what she considers the “French model” by pursuing academically demanding studies, holding a skilled profession, and being independent in her choice of a partner. She successfully completed a two-year degree in computer science and became a manager in a private company. Against her parents’ wishes, she married an Uzbek man and gave birth to a baby boy in 2019.

16Driven by a desire to assimilate into the white majority, Selma was largely unaware of racial dynamics during her adolescence and part of her adult life. She considered herself white and believed she was relatively spared from racism due to her fair skin and large eyes. She downplayed the few instances of racism she experienced, dismissing them as teasing. Selma had internalized the dichotomy between “Western gender equality” and “Asian patriarchy” promoted by the dominant discourse (Pyke and Johnson 2016, Collins 2022) and thus tended to idealize the majority group. In her romantic relationships, she sought out only white or mixed-race partners (“I had a kind of internalized racism”). She found out that her first French boyfriend fetishized Asian women (“All his girlfriends before me were Asian. Even after me, it was another Chinese girl…”). In her account, Selma reflects on the shame she felt when she was in elementary school in Orléans, in an environment she describes as typically white. She discusses the state of denial she was in during her adolescence and part of her adult life:

Little by little, I started to feel ashamed of what my parents did; I started to… and I developed this desire to be like the little white girls who had so many things. […] And it’s unfair to my parents, who struggled so much, who are immigrants. Actually, being the child of immigrants was very hard for me to deal with because there was a real disconnect between what I saw, what I wanted, who I was, and what my parents expected of me. […] They wanted me to grow up, marry a Chinese man, and open a store. And the thing is, I’d think, why are they forcing me to want to be like them when, in fact, it’s horrible—for me, it was really horrible how hard they worked. Well, it’s a Chinese expression: they worked like oxen. […] And, um, I was thinking about my freedom. I was mostly looking for freedom, I was mostly trying to assert myself and create my life the way I wanted it, and maybe more along the, um, French model. […] It was kind of, well, at the time I… I was mostly in denial about my Asian culture; I mostly presented myself as someone assimilated to white people.

17However, several events led Selma to become aware of racial discrimination and to actively engage as an “Asian woman.” After working for six years as an IT security consultant, she became a life coach to help other women “shed the social burden” and successfully transition into new careers, using her own journey as a resource to help other women:

I think that a lot of the distress I felt throughout my early years and up until the end came from being held back, because I was seen as a Chinese woman, and because others made decisions for me—and every time, I had to fight to break free…

18Selma then realized that she shared the experience of both gender and racial minoritization with many other racialized women. The blog posts she published discussing the condition of “Asian women,” along with her work as a life coach, drew strong reactions from her readers of diverse origins:

I thought I was the only one who felt so bad about it. […] And actually, after creating my account about “being an Asian woman,” um, some women who are actually Asian [but also] women from many different backgrounds came to see me saying, “But I feel the same way too.” And these women… from the Turkish community, Cambodian women, Thai women told me this…

19Motherhood also played a role in her anti-racist engagement: after her son was born in 2019, Selma tried to expose him to unbiased images of Asian people, by reading books to him featuring positive Asian characters. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Asian racism surged and culminated in online calls to attack “Chinese people” in October 2020, Selma, who had not previously felt targeted by racist violence, became concerned for her loved ones and discovered the extent of anti-Asian racism in France. In October 2022, she opened an Instagram account called “Being an Asian Woman” to speak out against anti-Asian racism, embrace her Asian identity, and assert herself as an Asian woman:

I want to fully embrace my Asian culture. I don’t have to justify being Asian. I’m not a person with flaws or anything. […] My culture is beautiful; my beauty is beautiful; it needs to be celebrated. I need to be represented. I need to fully live this life as an Asian person in France. […] I used to want to erase that whole part of myself that I tried to reject and deny, now I realize it shouldn’t be that way. But in fact, the more racism there is, the more I want to come back to that and assert myself as an Asian, as an Asian woman.

20Selma’s case illustrates the first type of trajectory where gender consciousness precedes racial consciousness. This type of trajectory points to the relative autonomy of the racial issue from the gender issue in the development of a relationship to the world and to politics: awareness and politicization regarding race and gender do not always develop in the same direction (Calderaro 2023, Keskinen 2018) or synchronously. Depending on the socializing context and the social trajectory, awareness of gender dynamics may either facilitate or hinder an individual’s awareness of race dynamics, and vice versa.

3.2. Simultaneous awareness of gender and race dynamics among middle-class migrant descendants

21Also among migrant descendants, the second type of trajectory is characterized by a synchronous awareness of gender and race dynamics and is often found among respondents from middle-class backgrounds. This is the case for Amélie, 25, born in France, who is studying animation film. Both of her parents are Chinese Cambodians. Amélie’s father is the son of wealthy Chinese Cambodian merchants. He studied law at a French higher-education institution in Cambodia before arriving in France in the 1970s to escape the Khmer Rouge regime. Amélie’s mother, who is from the same village as her father, joined him in France in 1995. In France, the status of “political refugee” from ex-Indochina was viewed more favorably than the condition of “economic migrant,” and French public opinion at the time was very favorable to welcoming “boat people” (Akoka and Hanus 2023). After completing vocational training in France upon his arrival, Amélie’s father held manual jobs in various sectors (working in hotels, insurance, and as a waiter) before becoming an electronics technician. He is now retired. In Amélie’s family, it was her mother who taught her the family history, the languages of their country of origin (Khmer, Teochew—a dialect of southeastern China), and the “traditional” and “Chinese” values described by the respondent as “respect for elders,” “work ethic,” “being serious,” “being clean,” etc. Her father’s stable job and the family’s access to the petty bourgeoisie status seem to have contributed to a more liberal upbringing. The respondent says she grew up in a single-family house and describes her family’s financial comfort. (“[My parents] never suffered from… [lack of money]—well, they always had enough to eat.”) Amélie does not describe either Asian culture or her family environment as oppressive. She is also fascinated by Asian art and cultures.

23For Amélie, contacts with left-wing circles played a decisive role in developing her awareness of race and gender dynamics. In middle school, Amélie met her best friend’s father, a member of the French Communist Party and a historian of decolonization. Every year, he would buy her tickets to attend the Fête de l’Humanité (a festival organized by the Communist Party). Around the same time, Amélie discovered articles on online forums (Tumblr, etc.) about systemic racism in the United States (including the writings of bell hooks), and these changed her worldview. At the same time, feminist ideas also stimulated her intellectually.

24Passionate about drawing from a very young age, Amélie reflected deeply on racially coded aesthetic standards and noted that the beauty of racial minorities is often perceived as a deviation from white beauty or is fetishized by the majority group (“Well, if we talk about the norm, for example, it’s a white, blonde woman, so anything that deviates from that becomes a little fetishized.”). Amélie expresses the link between feminism and anti-racism through her artistic work. She strives to represent minority groups more often in her animated creations, for example by portraying Narcissus, a character from Greek mythology, with Asian features. Amélie also draws a connection between majority-minority power dynamics and the fetishization of Asian women. She explains: “I tell myself that since we’re in the minority, if there’s an interest in us, it’s an interest in what deviates from the norm […]. It’s true that when you see Asian fetishism, it can be, uh, quite repulsive.” According to her, in a fetishized relationship, the bodies of Asian women represent the subordinate femininity projected by the majority. When a woman is trapped in the other’s fantasy, she cannot be herself. The stereotypes expected by the partner are constructed in opposition to the norms of whiteness. She says she prefers a romantic relationship with someone with the same heritage.

3.3. The intersection of race and gender dynamics in the context of first-generation migrant women

25Unlike migrant descendants who are racially socialized in France, first-generation Asian migrants undergo a more condensed process of racial socialization within the migration context after their arrival in France. Most of the first-generation migrant women interviewed grew up in Asian societies where they were part of the ethnic and racial majority and were not subject to demeaning racialization during their early socialization. Thus, most respondents face unfamiliar racial dynamics over which they have no influence upon their arrival in France. The experience of racist and gender-based violence comes as a shock and is likely to cause a reflective awareness of the gendered racialization imposed on them (Wang et al. 2022). However, certain environments are more conducive to the emergence of critical discourse and protest actions. In the French context, this is particularly true in artistic circles with strong left-wing leanings, as illustrated by Mia’s story.

26Born in the Gangnam district, Mia grew up in the affluent suburbs of Seoul. Her parents are teachers at an elite private school. Currently a first-year master’s student in art and technology in a Parisian higher-education institution, Mia claims that her sole motivation for coming to study in France was a romantic relationship with a French student living in Korea at the time. Mia had already identified as a lesbian before coming to France and was thus aware of gender and sexuality-based oppression in Korea. But it was only in France that she became conscious of racial discrimination and established a connection between anti-racism and feminism. Even though she expected to experience racism in France, the intensity of its violence and the way it was normalized deeply upset her. She describes “minor harassment on the street, a driver who tried to approach her, and boys who threw French fries at her head…” In her account, she uses the metaphor of a chair to describe the disgust she felt as a victim of unjustified racism:

It feels like someone is sitting on your face; it’s disgusting, suffocating, and even stinks. Sitting down is an everyday act. When someone walks by and stops in front of you, you become a chair. And the worst part is, you can’t say anything about it.

27She keeps a journal in which she describes the many racist and gender-based attacks she experiences:

• 4 French gender-neutral pronoun.

Because it hurts when I write about myself. So, I use the pronoun “iel”4 instead of “I.” It allows me to keep a distance between this text, this character in the text, and myself, even though these are my stories.

28The journal led to a performance during her master’s thesis defense, designed to leave a strong impression on those who are blind to violence against racial and gender minorities and to transcend her suffering:

During the performance, I undressed in front of the jury. I imagine that it was quite shocking for them. I wanted to express my thoughts and not just write them down on paper.

29Deeply aware of the intertwined nature of the racist and gender-based violence she endured, Mia created several works of art during her studies in France. As an undergraduate, she created a sculpture depicting a headless herbivore, a symbol of her powerlessness and weakness. Later, as a graduate student, she designed a hybrid excavator with a human body to express her anger and her desire for power. As a result of intense and ongoing self-reflection, her work has now evolved to offer a new perspective on the intersection of racism and sexism:

Now, I don’t have any anger, I don’t feel powerless. I feel almost nothing, these days. Because when I came to France, after experiences of discrimination, it felt like my world was broken. So now I want to rebuild my new world through my artistic work.

4. Conclusion

30For all the women interviewed, the experience of minoritization was decisive in raising their awareness of their minority status. However, it is also important to recognize the effect of class, and particularly cultural capital, in developing this awareness. Interaction with left-wing circles, university studies in the social sciences and the arts (Druez 2021), and the development of critical thinking through reading had an impact on the young women interviewed and provided them with desirable prospects, a framework for understanding the world, a vocabulary to describe their experiences, and a repertoire of actions.

31The following typology describes how an awareness of social relations of domination developed among the women of Asian descent interviewed in this study. It crosses the temporal dimension of awareness-raising (vertical axis) with the spatial dimension (single national space or multiple national spaces) of socialization (horizontal axis) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Trajectories of awareness of gender and race dynamics among women racialized as “Asian”

	Socialization within a single national space (born and raised in France)	Socialization across multiple national spaces (born in Asia and later immigrated to France)
Asynchrony of awareness (of gender and race)	Type 1 Early awareness of gender dynamics and late awareness of race dynamics (Selma’s case: a migrant descendant from the French working class)	Type 3 Gender awareness before racial awareness in Asia, and intertwined race and gender dynamics in France (Mia’s case: a first-generation migrant from the Korean upper class)
Synchrony of awareness (of gender and race)	Type 2 Simultaneous awareness of gender and race dynamics (Amélie’s case: a migrant descendant from the French middle class)	__________

32Migrant descendant women are socialized to gender and race issues within a single national context. However, different processes of awareness development are involved depending on their social background and the chronological order in which they experienced certain significant events throughout their life cycle. The family’s social trajectory (social reproduction or social mobility, and its extent) appears to be a major factor in determining how children develop their relationship to the world and to politics. Migrant descendants with working-class parents who have experienced upward social mobility often develop an awareness of gender dynamics before they become aware of race dynamics (Type 1). For these individuals, before addressing racial inequalities and fighting racism, the most urgent existential struggle is to break free from traditional gender norms (Pyke and Johnson 2016). The transition from a race-blind feminism to intersectional anti-racism proves particularly delicate for the Asian women from the least privileged social classes, who are often forced to prioritize one relationship of domination (gender) and to make concessions regarding another (race). These women are only able to make this connection after significant self-reflection. Whereas young women from middle-class families are given more freedom to simultaneously explore gender and race-related issues because of their parents’ economic security and less conflictual intergenerational relationships (Type 2).

33The first-generation respondents from the middle and upper class in their Asian country of origin, already socialized and somewhat aware of power dynamics in their home countries, discover the intertwining of race and gender dynamics in a migratory context (Type 3). While the time frame for gaining awareness of Type 3 power dynamics may be similar to Type 1 (awareness of gender preceding awareness of race, since people of Asian descent constitute the majority in Asia), the difference in Type 3 is that individuals experience a “reinforced socialization” (Darmon, 2023) in terms of gender across multiple national spaces and a “transformative socialization” (ibid.) in terms of race. In Mia’s case, coming to France allowed her to live out her homosexuality far from the social control of her home environment in South Korea. In contrast, she experienced an extremely intense racial socialization in France, which she describes as an existential transformation combined with psychological distress, a phenomenon that US colleagues have termed “racial trauma” (Liu et al. 2019). Unlike migrant descendants, whose racial socialization unfolds over a long period, first-generation migrants may experience racial socialization in the host country more intensely, potentially leading to acute psychological distress or even mental health disorders. First-generation migrant women are also often less linguistically competent to defend themselves against racist and sexual assaults, and this factor could increase their anxiety, anger, and sense of powerlessness.

34This typology was developed based on empirical data from a limited population and therefore does not cover all possible trajectories. Simultaneous development of gender and race awareness in the context of international migration may be possible, even though this pattern was not observed in the REACTAsie study. Similarly, asynchronous awareness of power dynamics may follow another pattern, where awareness of racial dynamics develops first and gender dynamics later.

35Beyond the diversity of social trajectories and pathways to awareness, the women surveyed here are united by their paradoxical position: a relatively privileged social status (upon arrival) combined with minoritized positions in terms of race and gender. This paradoxical position provides the surveyed women with the impetus and a sense of legitimacy to engage in various causes: emancipation and feminism, the anti-racist struggle, and the defense of the “Asian community.” Leveraging their cultural and social capital, the most politically engaged respondents often adopt artistic and intellectual forms of protest: the creation of anti-racist content (podcasts, audiovisual content, social media posts, essays, comics), civic engagement, the promotion of greater representation through live performances or educational initiatives, and anti-racist actions within community organizations.

36This study provides a deeper intersectional analysis of the politicization of racialized individuals by exploring two dimensions understudied in France until now: social position in both the country of origin and of destination (upward social mobility or social reproduction) and generation of migration (first-generation migrants or descendants). By highlighting the importance of national spaces of socialization and the timeframe for gaining awareness of various social dynamics of domination, it identifies three types of trajectories that lead Asian women in privileged social positions to become politicized around race and gender. From this perspective, this article contributes to the French debate on intersectionality, on the awareness of social dynamics of domination, and on the politicization of racialized people. Further research is needed on these issues, notably more detailed comparison of individual social profiles and a deeper understanding of the social mechanisms associated with different timeframes: social trajectories over a complete life cycle, a family history across generations, and social changes marked by significant events such as the Covid-19 pandemic.