Unequal Sexual Migration across Taiwan Strait: Illicit Migration of Chinese Migrant Sex Workers in Taiwan and Taiwanese Sex Buyers in China

The paper conceptualizes those transnational movements surrounding commercial sex as sexual migration to problematize the ways in which mainstream migration studies neglect the existences of both (undocumented) migrant sex workers and transnational sex buyers. In fact, it is downplaying this kind of sexual migration that makes (undocumented) migrant sex workers are left out of the entire migration studies and thus wrongly levelled as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘sexual criminals’ or ‘victims of trafficking in women’. Similarly, transnational sex buyers are frequently conceptualized as sex tourists who engage in conspicuous consumption and foster global trafficking in women and girls, particularly when child prostitution is involved. This literature hardly pay attention to analyze how sexuality intersects with gender, class, nationality and global economic hierarchy to shape the transnational movements of sex buyers.

Locating the transnational movements of sex sellers and sex buyers across Taiwan Strait, the paper aims to reveal the material bases of sexual migration across Taiwan Strait. Basing on interview and ethnographic data on (undocumented) Chinese migrant sex workers in Taiwan and Taiwanese men who travel to China to buy sex, I would argue that this bilateral sexual migration is indeed an unequal sexual migration in which men’s sexual migration is well-packed and developed in terms of global tourism, while sex workers’ migration is surrounded by anti-trafficking discourses and criminalized. In addition, although the bilateral sexual migrations of undocumented Chinese sex workers and Taiwanese sex tourists are linked to or driven by sexuality, this however cannot be reduced to ‘sexual’ and isolated from the broader socio-economic, political and cultural context in this region. Furthermore, drawing on insights from the intersectional approach, I would reveal how the bilateral sexual migration across Taiwan Strait is constituted at the intersection of gender, sexuality, class, nationality and migration.