Becoming privileged yet marginalized Other: American migrants’ narratives of stereotyping-triggered displacement in China

Abstract

This study examines the understudied daily lives of Westerners in China, focusing on 35 American migrants’ experiences of being stereotyped as the foreign Other during their daily interactions with Chinese locals as an illuminating case. The interviewed Americans’ narratives reveal that the perceived stereotyping, triggered by their race and/or nationality, exposed them to (a) admiration because of whiteness, Westernness, and Americanness desired in Chinese society, (b) underestimation of Chinese cultural literacy due to foreignness-marked non-Chineseness, and (c) dissociation via essentialization and stigmatization of foreigners owing to the conflation of whiteness, foreignness, and Westernness in the Chinese gaze. Although not necessarily seeming hostile, the perceived stereotyping still left the interviewees an enduring sense of being displaced as privileged yet marginalized outsiders at the everyday level. In and through strategically dealing with the perceived stereotyping, these Americans ultimately claimed their non-Chineseness and became the paradoxical foreign Other with subjectivities in China.