Aging with Joy: Transnational Boy Idol Fandom among Hong Kong Immigrant Women in Canada

• In Event: From Youth to Elders: The Social Worlds of Immigrants Across the Lifespan

Abstract

Older Asian immigrant women in North America have received limited scholarly attention. Existing studies tend to emphasize assimilation and hardship, focusing on either the model minority narrative or their deskilling and labor market disadvantages. Far less is known about how they experience fun and intimacy within transnational contexts. This paper addresses this gap through a four-year ethnographic study of transnational Canto-pop boy idol fandom in Canada and Hong Kong. Drawing on recent feminist and queer scholarship on joy and pleasure, I examine how middle-aged and older Hong Kong immigrant women in Canada cultivate collective joy and pleasure through fandom practices. This paper argues that the joyful and pleasurable experiences of boy idol fandom cultivate meaningful connections for older immigrant women in three interrelated ways: (1) as a practice of doing transnational family as mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters; (2) as a site for cultivating feminized diasporic communities; and (3) as an avenue for sustaining solidarity with homeland communities. Through an intersectional lens, this study highlights how these aging Asian women remain socially marginalized despite relative financial stability in the host society, and how they build meaningful connections by cultivating alternative diasporic and transnational communities through boy idol fandom.

Author

• Pamela Tsui, University of Toronto