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Deferral and Intimacy: Long-Distance Romance and Thai Migrants Abroad

Sat, March 18, 10:45am to 12:45pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Mezzanine, Willow Centre

Abstract

Aek's fiancée, Fern, was already married to a European man. Fern sent remittances each month back to Aek so that he could work on a future home for the two of them back in Isan, Northeastern Thailand, to live in after the dissolution of her European marriage. In the meantime, Aek would wait. But, in the time spent waiting, plans and aspirations changed. As Aek and Fern continued to talk about their plans together, this life deferred grew more and more spectral.
This article is an ethnographic study of the Thai male romantic partners of Thai women working overseas as sex workers or marriage migrants, and their plans for and anxieties about the future. Via looking at the "work of waiting" (Kwon 2015) of those left behind, I argue here that the waiting grows increasingly in tension with a realization of the impermanence of hopes, selves, and bodies. I ask: what does it mean to 'wait,' when what is promised, who promises and the future date when promises are to be realize are each in flux?

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