The absent spouses: Gender, sex, race and the extramarital sexuality among Chinese migrants in Japan

This article investigates patterns and contexts of heterosexual extramarital practices among Chinese immigrants in Japan, and their social implications. I show that first, both Chinese men and women were engaged in extramarital sexual behavior during migration albeit in different contexts. Secondly, these extramarital sexual practices imply that international migration is both an economic strategy and a sexual strategy. Even economically motivated migration has sexual and emotional motivations and consequences. Thirdly, Chinese immigrants' extramarital sex is culturally specific to the context of migration from China to Japan. Finally, Chinese immigrants' extramarital sexuality shows the competing cultural interpretations of marriages and gender role expectations. Underlying the extramarital sexuality is an assumption of gender equality in sexual subjectivity. Even a seemingly regressive marital arrangement and gendered role assignment in a marriage could be used strategically by Chinese women in their pursuits of sexual and romantic expressions.