This study deals with the velar movements involved in (i) the realisation of the phonemic [±nasal] contrast on vowels and (ii) contextual nasalization. We measure velar positions with an electromagnetic articulatograph (EMA) for two French speakers. Our results confirm that (i) nasal vowels are produced with a lower velum height than nasal consonants; (ii) velum height targets for nasal and oral segments can overlap, especially sequences of nasal consonant and contextually nasalized oral vowels or /l/ and /R/ consonants (iii) contextually nasalization in French is rather a carryover of the lowering of the velum than an anticipation of this movement.