Scientific article
OA Policy
English

‘She’s a real expat’: be(com)ing an expatriate woman through everyday performances of heteronormativity

ContributorsDuplan, Karineorcid
First online date2021-09-24
Abstract

This paper provides an ethnographical account of everyday practices of how expatriate women in the Global North adjust and negotiate their gender position to become part of a transnational elite. Drawing on feminist scholarship, it makes the case for a comprehensive understanding of the production of expatriate wives’ gendered subjectivities in relation to the neoliberal doxa of success associated with transnational mobility. Through an intersectional analysis that places the body as the main scale of analysis, this paper sheds light on the role of hegemonic sexual norms in the context of family migration in Luxembourg. The results reveal the spatial dimension of heteronormativity in the shaping of expatriate subjectivities. They also give insights into how these women access the world of global privileges while supporting the social reproduction of their expatriate family and contributing to the reconfiguration and reproduction of exclusionary power relations. In so doing, this paper argues for the use of heteronormativity as a useful- although underused-analytical framework to understand further the power dynamics that shape transnational experiences, spaces and subjectivities in the context of neoliberal globalisation.

Citation (ISO format)
DUPLAN, Karine. ‘She’s a real expat’: be(com)ing an expatriate woman through everyday performances of heteronormativity. In: Gender, place and culture, 2021. doi: 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1975099
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Article (Published version)
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
Journal ISSN0966-369X
208views
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Creation22/07/2022 13:34:00
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