Transnational intimacy and economic precarity of western men in northeast Thailand

ABSTRACT

This research examines the increasing migration of western men into Thailand, focusing on men in transnational intimate relationships in the northeastern region (Isan). Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the lives of western men by focusing on their shifting social locations and experiences of gendered and economic mobility. While the men in this study could be considered ‘lifestyle migrants’, our findings complicate how lifestyle migration literatures commonly represent migrant subject positions and privilege, and we find that gender and intimate relations play a much larger role in this context than other studies of lifestyle migration suggest. We found class diversity among western men in Thailand and, over time, a complex set of constraints and immobilities that thwarted their ideals of greater control or self-reinvention. We argue that the broad pattern of economic precarity and uncertain futures among these men intertwines substantially with the gendered desires and transnational intimate relationships that originally motivated their migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Thailand
• lifestyle migration
• gendered mobilities
• transnational intimacy
• economic precarity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Megan Lafferty http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8021-3211

Notes

1 The Thai government provides only up to 100 residency permits annually per nationality, available only after ten consecutive years of holding permanent residency status.

2 Spousal and retirement visas were not guaranteed and were dependent on a minimum monthly income or sum of money in a Thai bank.

3 The term farang refers to white westerners. According to Cook and Jackson (1999, 18), it is ‘a ubiquitous Thai cultural-ethnic term which conflates “Caucasian (race)”and “Western (culture)”’.

4 http://www.betafilm.com/30degreesinfebruary.

5 It is not only western men who experience increased status due to their global position and whiteness; light-skinned Asians from economically and culturally dominant countries such as Japan and Korea are also widely revered by Thais.