Chapter 7 - Fusing Offline and Online Realities: The Negotiation of Sexualities among Male Vietnamese Migrants in Japan

Summary

Introduction

The relationship between transnational migration and sexualities has always been complex. On the one hand, cross-border migration has been one of the most prominent forces that introduce migrants to new and diverse ways of engaging with sexualities as it exposes them to new sexual environments, norms, ideologies and practices within new social realities. On the other hand, transnational migration can impose certain constraints on migrants’ sexualities, because of factors ranging from those on the structural level, such as racial, ethnic and social class discrimination and unsuitable working and living arrangements, to the interpersonal level, such as the existence and surveillance of co-ethnic communities (Ahmad 2009; Cantú et al. 2009; Carrillo 2017; Hoang and Yeoh 2015). Despite such a dynamic relationship, the sexual dimension of cross-border migration has yet to receive adequate attention in mainstream sociological migration research (Carrillo 2017). Moreover, the sexuality of migration has been further complicated by the increasing developments of information and communication technologies, online media platforms, as well as diversified forms of migrants’ engagement with global and local sexual cultures and fields. While there is a vast spectrum of studies on migrants’ utilization of digital platforms for transnational connections, communication, business activities and identity formation, less has been said about how migrants engage with sexuality-related matters within digital spaces (Ang 2019; Shield 2019). This chapter contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary migrants’ engagement with sexuality by inquiring into how migrants’ sexualities in terms of sexual desirability and status are negotiated during transnational migration. Such a perspective, I argue, provides a good venture point to inquire into how the online and offline realities intertwine and affect one another in migrants’ social worlds.

The chapter engages with a case study of how male Vietnamese migrants in Japan negotiate their sexualities in terms of practices, desirabilities and statuses within transnational social spaces. This research population was chosen for two main reasons. Firstly, the number of Vietnamese migrants residing in Japan has rapidly increased, and they have become one of the most visible foreign populations in the country in the last decade. By the end of 2021, Vietnamese represented the second-largest group of foreign residents, the second-largest group of international students and the largest group of foreign workers in Japan (Ministry of Justice 2021).