ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter will more specifically focus gender and class in diaspora life. The marginal position of the men and women portrayed in the following chapter, flexible strategies for escaping either inflexible gendered ideas about what women can or can not do, or escaping the position of being Chinese male labourers in a state that essentially sees them as problematic citizens, concerns deep-rooted issues of dignity and survival. In the process of social mobility either through education or transnational work migration, gendered notions are at work and act as guiding principles. Following Nonini (Ibid:221) on this point, within such perceptions different gendered imaginaries: "...operates through psychic mechanisms of compensatory fantasy." Fantasies that to a great extent revolve around the accumulation of wealth and capital through hard work, as we saw in the last chapter. To overcome marginalisation and to secure the well being of families, transgressing ideas of gender and class are sometimes necessary.
