Engendering Migration Journey

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with the Thai migrant community in Hong Kong between 2016 and 2020, this book provides original insights into the complexity and diversity of identity negotiation, ethnicity navigation, and womanhood reinvention of Thai migrant women in Hong Kong. Allowing research to move beyond standard stories of victimized migrants and domestic workers by focusing on the increasing number of Southeast Asians moving into the middle-class, this ethnographic study of the everyday lived experience of Thai migrant women in Hong Kong will advance a new understanding of transnational migration and mobility at the intersections of gender, ethnicity, class, generation, and religion. This book illustrates the influence of transnationalism and multiculturalism on migrant women's meaning-making and accentuates the importance of diversity within a migrant population — in particular, the importance of maintaining an intersectional perspective to understand the broader phenomenon of contemporary middle-class and professional migration within Southeast Asia. Herbary Zhang is an incoming Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a Research Associate at Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC), France. He is the awardee of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and Ernst Mach Grant. His research engages with gender and migration, family, marriage and health, intersectionality, and feminist research methods by focusing on Hong Kong-Southeast Asia connections.