The radicalisation of Chinese work-study sojourners in interwar France.

Abstract

The scholarship on migrant sojourner communities in interwar Europe has presented the process of political radicalisation as especially focused on the European metropole, exploring the cosmopolitan groupings and interactions that it enabled. This thesis provides a contrary example: Chinese sojourners in interwar France in the first half of the 1920s. It demonstrates that the radicalisation of significant numbers of Chinese sojourners in interwar France was not primarily a process driven by cosmopolitan interactions but, instead, one enabled chiefly through Chinese and French networks. Despite the cross-cultural potential of Marxism, with its universalist critique of both capitalism and imperialism, the Chinese sojourners who adopted Marxism while in France did so primarily within two contexts. The first was their own Chinese sojourner groups, often centred on locations where a number of sojourners were concentrated. The second was broader French networks accessed through educational institutions, factories and trade unions, associations and political parties. This thesis therefore explores the evolution and impact of the work-study scheme that sent so many Chinese to France in the 1920s, from the scheme’s founding purposes, through its funding failures, to the process of widespread sojourner radicalisation – and radical activism – that accompanied and followed the scheme’s demise. It demonstrates the importance of local relationships and networks, whether predominantly Chinese or French, in shaping sojourner experiences and trajectories – specifically, ideological and political trajectories. In exploring these processes, the thesis demonstrates the geographically diffuse nature of sojourner radicalisation. While the metropole played a significant role, it demonstrates that radicalisation took place in several key locations around France. It thus questions the metropole’s dominance within the literature on radical migrant communities, arguing for an approach more rooted in the range of sojourner experiences.

Date of Award	9 Dec 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Robert Bickers (Supervisor) & Su Lin Lewis (Supervisor)