Queer Sinophone Intimacies: Visualizing Queer Migrant Domestic Workers Available to Purchase

While migration studies of Hong Kong tend to track the outward flow of people due to political instability and postcolonial transition, they seldom connect the situations of Hong Kong’s “flexible citizens” with the migration of Southeast Asian domestic workers into Hong Kong. Furthermore, existing sociological studies of migrant domestic workers often reinforce a heteronormative assumption in the model of the international division of reproductive labor. This chapter analyzes documentary films about queer migrants, beauty pageants, and activism such as Lesbian Factory (2010) and its sequel Rainbow Popcorn (2012), both directed by Susan Chen; and Baby Ruth Villarama’s Sunday Beauty Queen (2016). The chapter shows how an unruly comparison of queer intimacies in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong yields a sorely needed intersectional critique of race, migration, and queerness in Sinophone theory and Hong Kong studies.