Intimate relationships of queer Chinese women migrants in the UK

Thesis

This thesis explores how migration from China to the United Kingdom (UK) intersects with sexuality to shape and transform the intimate relationships of queer Chinese women migrants. It is a qualitative study using constructivist grounded theory methodology and qualitative methods, including semi-structured in-depth and unstructured interviews with 44 queer women migrants from the Chinese one-child generation, and over one hundred hours of participant observation conducted in 15 months in the UK. The study contributes both empirically and theoretically to the scholarship in the sociology of intimacy, gender and sexuality studies, family studies, and queer migration studies.

Empirically, the thesis traces queer Chinese women’s migration trajectories, emphasising the cyclical and mutually constitutive relationship between intimacy, sexuality, and migration within shifting sociopolitical landscapes. It begins by examining their pre-migration lives in China and highlights the heterogeneity of queer daughterhood experiences and the important role of sexuality in migration decision-making. It then investigates how migration to the UK transforms queer women’s sexualities and their intimate relationships with families of origin, intimate partner(s), and/or friends. Their understandings and experiences of jia (family/home) also shift. These transformed relationships, in turn, influence ongoing and future migration trajectories.

Theoretically, grounded in empirical data, the thesis develops the theory of Malleable Intimacy. The theory captures how changing structural and relational forces within migration trajectories shape intimate relationships. At the same time, queer women navigate these transformations with adaptability, flexibility, and strategy. They engage in the ongoing reflexive reconstruction of self, including sexual selfhood while reshaping intimate relationships and negotiating changing socio-political structures. Malleable Intimacy, therefore, highlights the complex, flexible, ambivalent, and situated nature of intimacy, showing how it is continuously formed and transformed through the dynamic interplay between personal, interpersonal, and structural domains within queer Chinese women’s migration trajectories.

Authors: Ng, SYM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-zb6zdmdow
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: sexuality; queer migration; intimacy; one-child policy; gender
• Subjects: Sociology; Migration; Sex; Gender