The studies on overseas Lao who left Laos after the 1975 political events have generally focused on these migrants’ social incorporation in their receiving countries and on the dynamics of their intergenerational transmission. On the contrary, the present article explores the links that these migrants maintain with Laos, by examining the case of French Lao and their transnational humanitarian activities. It is based on a multi-sited ethnography conducted with the associations they created to support the population of Laos. Adopting Carling’s concept of “asymmetries” (2008), it analyses the relationships between these “developers” and the “beneficiaries” of the associations’ projects. The French Lao’ involvement stems from their illusions that run up against the ambivalent welcome they receive in the field. The subsequent misunderstandings between them and the local population generate disillusionment and critical, mutual evaluations.

The influx of refugees into France since 2015 has been framed as a crisis and marked by a restrictive turn in arrival and asylum policies. By comparison, in the 1970s Southeast Asian refugees fleeing from communist regimes were welcomed warmly in the country. This article compares two in-depth case studies of refugees, analysed using the biographical policy evaluation method, to retrace how the policies and collective representations of these two different historical moments affect the experiences of refugees over time. It shows that policies play a significant role in shaping refugees' experiences in respect of their access to papers, housing, language courses and work, thus impacting, but not determining, their possibilities of reconstructing life in exile. The comparison also raises the question of how personal experiences of arrival, viewed as a rejection or a welcome, influence refugees' life courses.

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