Gendering Queer Migration: Evidence from Chinese LGBTQ+ Migrants

• In Event: 30814 - Gender Dynamics of Immigration

Abstract

Gender and migration scholarship has shown how migration processes are gendered, while the queer migration literature emphasize the role of sexuality as a distinct axis of power in shaping migration. However, the interconnection between gender and sexuality in the context of migration remains insufficiently theorized. To examine how gender shapes the experiences of queer migrants, I draw from in-depth interviews with 50 skilled Chinese LGBTQ+ migrants in the United States and Canada. Disentangling the effect of gender from sexuality, my findings reveal that gender provides privileges to a subset of gay men in navigating heteronormative expectations while constraining others. Instead of being uniformly restrictive, however, gendered subjectivities are also set in motion and reconstituted in the process of migration. The varied impacts of gender and the recursive interplay between gender and queer migration enrich our understanding of heteronormativity as at once a structuring force and a social construct that is actively negotiated and contested through migration processes.

Author

• Tori Shucheng Yang, University of British Columbia