House, Car, or Permanent Residency?

Abstract

While male migrants are an understudied group, even less attention has been paid to their heterosexual practices. This chapter locates such practices by examining online personal ads posted by higher-wage mainland Chinese migrant men in Singapore. This chapter empirically contributes to migration and masculinity studies by examining the understudied site of online personal ads. Theoretically, this chapter aims to contribute by firstly, extending Aihwa Ong’s (1999) theory of neoliberal flexibility to an analysis of Chinese masculinity. Secondly, even as Chinese migrant men exemplify neoliberal flexibility, the chapter argues that neoliberalism is not the only condition producing flexible masculinity. Rather, Chinese migrant men’s flexible subject-making can be analyzed as ‘variegated’ and simultaneously situated in cultural and social imaginaries.