pp. 719-746

Up against a dearth of employment opportunities in Paris, some of the women from northern China who migrated to earn money and overcome the effects of a status fall in their native country start looking for an alternative solution and turn to prostitution, while others look for a French or Chinese husband or partner. The article examines the strategies available to these women for accomplishing what they migrated for, analyzing a heterogeneous set of economic-sexual exchanges. The analysis reveals how porous the borders of prostitution are and brings to light a continuum between marriage and prostitution – taken together, these represent so many economic-sexual ways of « reaching an arrangement ». For these women in their precarious situations, sex becomes a genuine migration resource.