‘China doll snatched away my husband’: The intersectional othering of Chinese migrant women in a Malaysian newspaper

Abstract

This article examines the role of a mainstream newspaper in perpetuating the othering of an under-researched migrant sub-group in Malaysia, Chinese national women who work in low-paid jobs and the illegal sex trade. While issues surrounding these women’s economic and social vulnerability have been largely ignored in media discourse, their involvement in sex work as well as their extramarital relationships with Chinese-Malaysian men have garnered negative press coverage. Using critical discourse analysis and critical stylistics, this study analyses the mediatised representations of these economic migrants, the adulterous husbands and their Chinese-Malaysian wives in a local Chinese-owned news site. Our findings show that the articles position the migrant women as sexual predators, sexual commodities and criminals; the men as prey as well as deserting spouses and fathers; and the local Chinese women as moral wives. We argue that these representations facilitate a co-ethnic racism that intersects with gender, sexuality, nationality, migrant status, occupation and social class. These representational choices are inscribed with patriarchal, neoliberal and xenophobic ideologies that converge in the media coverage to reinforce social fictions that justify and entrench the marginalisation of this highly stigmatised group of migrant women.