Marylène Lieber

Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine in Switzerland: competing justifications for cultural legitimacy

Abstract This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out with practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine in Switzerland, gives an account of competition between Swiss therapists and Chinese doctors, two groups with radically different training but both of which hope to benefit from the same market. This is all happening in a context that is laissez-faire and yet in which the Swiss government favours its own nationals. The stakes in this contest crystallize around two very different forms of cultural legitimacy, each of which is considered to be a given and not up for dispute. For our interviewees, then, the underlying question is which group of practitioners, Chinese or Western, is more competent.

Chinese Migrants in Switzerland: From Mutual Assistance to Promoting Economic Interests

Th e various types of Chinese migration to Europe have by and large been well studied, but we know very little about the case in Switzerland. Th is piece of research aims at fi lling the gap in our knowledge. Chinese migration to Switzerland appears to take a very diff erent form from that in other European countries. Here, one does not fi nd the so-called “chain migration,” in which the migrants are concentrated in ethnic sectors of the economy, or live in enclaves in cities, as in England, France or Italy. In Switzerland, on the contrary, one sees rather recent, individual migrants who are mostly highly skilled professionals, students or white-collar workers in various sectors of the economy. Th ey seem to be well integrated in Swiss society, most of them mastering at least one of the offi cial languages or English. Th eir networks are very international and their Chinese acquaintances are mostly of the same socio-professional category. Th is report takes a look at the important changes in this particular population in Switzerland over the last 50 years and some areas of the transformation in their social organization. Chinese migrants to Europe usually originate in traditional emigration areas such as Guangdong, southern Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. Th e origin