Gendered Sexual Migration Across Taiwan Strait

Globalization and the uneven development of global economy accelerated both transnational commercial sex and global sex tourism. Since late 1987 when Taiwan lifted martial law (1949-1987), every year there have been thousands of Chinese women coming to Taiwan either as marital migrants or undocumented workers, to seek a better life in a relatively richer and freer Taiwan. On the other hand, as a rising economic power in East Asia, Taiwan once served as a destination of sex tourism, now gradually appears as a sending country of sex tourists. Geographical closeness and cultural intimacy in terms of language and Han-ethnicity have served to turn China into a hot sex tourism destination for Taiwanese men.

Based on six years’ empirical research on (undocumented) Chinese migrant sex workers in Taiwan and Taiwanese men’s sex tourism in China, the paper aims to conceptualize transnational commercial sex and sex tourism as sexual migration to challenge the mainstream discourses regarding migrant sex workers and male sex tourists; i.e. the former as poor ‘trafficked sexual victims’ and the later as sexual subjects who exploit local women. I would argue that the framework of ‘anti-trafficking’ not only implies a strong sense of criminality and thus stigmatizes (undocumented) Chinese migrant sex workers, but also fails to recognize migrant sex workers as sexual subjects who are either struggling for a better life or simply for adventure. Moreover, the bilateral sexual migration is complicatedly shaped by gender, ethnicity and regional economic hierarchy. It is Taiwanese men travel to China to buy sex, and Chinese women to Taiwan for selling sex. I therefore would draw on an intersectional approach to carefully examine the ways in which the gendered sexual migration is embedded in the cultural, socio-economic and political context between Taiwan and China.