Femininities on transnational journeys and sexual health risk: experiences of Chinese immigrant women in Canada

Abstract

Negotiations at work in a globalising China in regard to femininity, sexuality, and family relationships have been well documented from the 1990s. Nonetheless less is known about them in a transnational context, and femininities are far less explored than masculinities. Drawing on interview data from a larger research study of transnationalism and gendered HIV vulnerability, this article investigates the intersection of femininity, sexuality and sexual health risk through Chinese immigrant women’s narratives about their experiences in Canada. It examines to what extent these intimate negotiations within China are re-enacted through Chinese immigrant women’s transnational experiences in Canada. These women live ‘in-between’ China and Canada in terms of identity, space and time with their cross-cultural connections unveiling both virtual and actual relations. Gender norms and roles, intimate and sexual experience, and family relations are realigned in the transnational lives of these women and are impacted by both their home and host societies, as well as their past and present experience in China. Used in the article as a concept and an analytical lens, gender is acknowledged as a key organising principle in post-immigration individual and social experience.

Keywords:

• Canada
• China
• femininity
• gender
• risk
• sexual health
• transnational spaces

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express her appreciation to the research participants of this study in both Canada and China. I cheerfully thank the research project P.I, Professor Yanqiu Rachel Zhou and Nancy Johnson for their help in the article’s finalisation. I am also grateful to this project’s research associates and assistants, Dr Helen Hong Su, Liping Peng, Emmy Arnold, Dr Xiaoqing Gao, Xiaoxin Ji, and Jane Ma, and collaborators (Chi Heng Foundation, Shanghai, China; Institute of Sexuality and Gender, Renmin University of China; Asian Community AIDS Services, Toronto, Canada; St. Stephen’s House, Toronto, Canada) for their contributions at different stages of this study. Finally I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.