Queer migration across the Sinophone world: queer Chinese Malaysian students’ educational mobility to Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography of Chinese Malaysian students’ educational mobility, this article discusses the experiences, everyday practices and future aspirations of my queer informants who went to Taiwan for university and returned to Malaysia after graduation. Through examining their narratives, this article has three objectives. First, it demonstrates how tensions between my informants’ ethnic and sexual identities are reconfigured and how new forms of queer relationality and subject positions have emerged via a distinctive process of student migration across the Chinese-speaking world. Second, it contributes to the theorisation of transnational queer Chinese cultures vis-à-vis an articulation of queer Sinophone Malaysia. Third, by way of conclusion, I present a case study of transnational queer activism and demonstrate how it is practised by returned migrants in everyday life settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer migration
• educational mobility
• Sinophone
• Malaysia
• Taiwan

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Monash University, Malaysia Campus under the 2019 Early Career Researchers Seed Fund Grant Scheme. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) at Leiden University on 17 July 2019. I thank Jeroen de Kloet, the discussant of our panel ‘East and Southeast Asian Queer Cultures in Transnational Frames’, for his useful comments, especially those concerning my understanding of Chineseness and reflexivity as an ethnographer. Many thanks to the Global Asia Research Center (GARC) at the National Taiwan University for hosting me as a Visiting Scholar during my fieldwork in Taiwan. I thank Simon Patience for his editorial suggestion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 ‘LGBT Rights in Taiwan: What Travellers Should Know Before Going.’ https://queerintheworld.com/lgbt-rights-in-taiwan/ (Accessed: 29 October 2019).

2 In contemporary Malaysia, various types of Chinese are spoken, including but not limited to Cantonese, Foochow, Fuzhou, Hainanese, Hakka, Hokkien, Mandarin and Teochew. Due to the sizable population of Cantonese ancestry, Cantonese, along with Mandarin, is considered the lingua franca in most parts of the state of Selangor where I conducted field research. It is also widely understood across Malaysia because of the widespread consumption of Hong Kong cultural products (e.g. TV dramas, films, popular music) since the 1970s. My interviews and conversations with informants were conducted in either Mandarin or Cantonese, depending on their preferences or proficiency.

3 Unless otherwise specified, pseudonyms are used to protect my informants’ identities.

4 National universities in Taiwan are state-funded and considered academically superior to private universities.

5 TT1069 is an online gay forum based in Taiwan.

6 The vast majority of my informants, queer or heteronormative, prioritised their identities as Malaysians or Chinese Malaysians over the more generic ethnic or overseas Chinese. Samson’s emphasis on the Chinese language rather than his ethnic identity perhaps also serves to uphold rather than diminish the importance of one’s national identity.

7 The informant prefers her real name be used here.

8 Popular Chinese term for LGBT people.