Abstract
With China’s full-scale insertion into the global capitalist economy since its economic reform in the late 1970s, China has emerged as a key player in global political, social, and cultural realms. The present paper examines a group of elite Chinese gay men’s global multiple migration experiences as they mobilized their class-based capital to capitalize on the opportunity’s globalization has opened up for Chinese citizens, including sexual minorities. Global multiple migration is conceptualized as ‘a pattern of migration characterised by multiple changes of destination internationally in one’s lifetime’. It becomes a strategy and a form of capital employed by highly educated, Chinese self-identified gay men to navigate social stigmatisation, negotiate family pressure, circumvent state oppression, and achieve desired life goals. By examining the intersection between global multiple migration, class and sexuality, this paper contributes to the nascent literature on global China by documenting how individuals actively capitalize on the global rise of China and their manoeuvre in the transnational fields, as well as how Chinese citizens’ global manoeuvre is underscored by and reproduce existing local class and sexuality inequalities.

About the Speaker
Susanne Choi Yuk Ping is Professor at the Department of Sociology and the Co-Director of the Gender Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her D.Phil. in Sociology from Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Susanne’s research explores the impacts of macro social changes such as modernization, globalization, and urbanization on gender, family and sexuality. Her lead–authored book Masculine Compromise (published by University of California Press) explores how men’s rural to urban migration shapes gender and family dynamics in post-socialist China. Her articles were published by American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, The Sociological Review, Social Science and Medicine, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, The China Quarterly, Work, Employment and Society, Gender, Work and Organization, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies among others.