by Aaron Raphael Ponce, EASt/LAMC/ULB

Early ethnographies on gay Chinese migrants either portray the latter as economically, socially, and sexually subaltern, targeting Western countries as an idealized space of economic advancement or sexual liberty; or are otherwise written prior to China's current political and economic growth, with focus on Anglophone countries as destinations. Using mixed ethnographic methods within the context of life trajectory studies, this project takes a look at the lives of transnational gay Belgian-Chinese couples, to explore how changing dynamics of sex(uality), nation(ality) and class in a non-Anglophone context both reflect global trends and challenge traditional stereotypes about gay migration and couplehood.

Aaron Raphael Ponce is currently an academic assistant at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie des mondes contemporains (LAMC) and a member of the East Asian Studies team (EAST) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Doctoral Seed Grant of the Maison des Sciences humaines of the ULB, and an assistant of the FNRS Research Project “Situated Mixedness in a Super-Diverse Context: The Case of Belgian-Asian couples in Belgium” under Prof. Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot. He is also a member of the China Academic Network on Gender (CHANGE) and one of the founders of the Philippine Studies Network-Belgium. His research centers on gendered migration and Asian diasporas.

Friday 2nd April 2021, 10am - 12pm

Online via Teams

Compulsory Registration : contact asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.ac.be