Everywhere to go but home: On (re) (dis) (un) location

Abstract

Abstract Women of colour who have migrated from ex‐colonies to the ‘West’ are located within a complicated matrix of outsider‐witkin social relationships where they are not only sexualised as women but also racialised as non‐white female Other in Eurocentric societies. Contemporary feminist debates have already raised complex issues about the construction of the female Self with the assertion that subjectivities are not only a result of sexual socialisation but that the Self is equally a product of individual locationing, in historical time, geographical space, and within hierarchised frameworks of power relationships. However, most of the current research into this multilayered subjectivity is from the literary and representational disciplines and sociologists have been slow to undertake empirical investigations of the questions raised by these debates. My research is an ethnographic study centred around narratives of immigration experiences. This paper is based on the oral accounts of the (re) (dis) (un)location experiences of some Chinese and Filipina women who have moved to the UK from their home countries in Pacific and South‐East Asia. By focusing on ‘home‘—a shifting notion in terms of remembered time and space—this paper attempts to make connections between feminist theories, literary theories of autobiography, post‐colonial, culture and social theories through the medium of oral narratives.