From Recruitment to Repatriation: Press Narratives and the Public Making of Chinese Labourers in France, 1916–1922

Abstract

Abstract

This article argues that the French press was a key component of wartime governance during the mobilisation of Chinese labour. Based on a curated cross-section of French newspapers in the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, covering from 1916 to 1922, this paper identifies a recurring anxiety–reassurance grammar through which press reporting presented Chinese labourers as a source of concern whose presence could nevertheless be managed under conditions of censorship and mass mobilisation. The article analyses reports that can be allocated to three phases. During recruitment, inherited ‘Yellow Peril’ imaginaries were altered, producing a Chinese labour force framed as useful and manageable. During wartime deployment, the presence and necessity of governance were highlighted by reporting everyday frictions and criminal cases involving Chinese, while portraying an image of sacrifice by them when required. After the Armistice, press reporting increasingly produced an image of repatriability that normalised recurring intervention and removal, even as Chinese diplomats and students tried to defend their compatriots’ contributions and reputation. By highlighting the functional role of publicity in labour governance, the article complicates linear accounts of inclusion and exclusion in wartime societies.