From Thailand to Hong Kong: The Engendering Journey of Thai Migrant Women and the Reinvention of Womanhood

This research explores the intersection of gender, migration, and identity through ethnographic fieldwork among middle- to upper-class Thai female migrants in Hong Kong. Adopting an intersectional framework, it examines how traditional gender roles and expectations—socialized in Thailand—are challenged and reconfigured through the lived experiences of transnational migration. Drawing on twelve months of participant observation and twenty in-depth interviews, this study investigates how these women negotiate their identities within new socio-cultural and economic contexts, and how they actively reinvent their womanhood across familial, labor, and social domains. The findings reveal the contradictions between dominant stereotypes of Thai femininity and the diverse, fluid practices of womanhood in migratory settings. The research contributes to the scholarship on gender and migration by emphasizing the role of race, class, and cultural capital in shaping identity formation and gender performance in transnational contexts.