Circulation, Encounters and Transformation: Indonesian Female Migrants

This paper explores the ways in which notions of gender, space and propriety are drawn upon by female migrants in performing their gender identities in new spaces of their migration to Hong Kong. It scrutinizes the narratives of women's circulation and encounters in the process of migration. The paper draws on post-structuralist approaches to reveal the ways in which the female migrants position themselves in the changing spaces of migration. We uncover diversity among the women in the study in performing their gender identities. Yet the women reveal similar shifting subjectivities in negotiating their positions in changing local relations. Circulation and encounters that make up transnational migration are seen as multiple facets, intersecting and impacting on subject and space. Employing an ethnographic approach, the research explores the reworking of migrants' relations and practices through changing gender identities and subjectivities. The transformation of the migrants in this study is evident in their multiple and diverse expressions of shifting subjectivities.