Racialised sexualities: the case of Filipina migrant workers in East Malaysia

In national narratives of ‘Malayness’, a specific language (Malay) and religion (Islam) have become key aspects of an identity that excludes migrants and those of ‘questionable’ sexualities. Consequently Filipina migrants working in the nightlife industries in East Malaysia have been subjected to disciplinary discourses of ethnicity and sexuality that underpin these national narratives. Attempts to tighten migration laws and curb nightlife activities have resulted in a racialisation of Filipina migrant sexualities. Using ethnographic methods, this article explains the impacts of dominant state and public discourses of migration, ethnicity and gender, which Filipinas encounter in their everyday lives in their destination country. In the process the article also reveals how Filipinas resist these discourses and hence participate in the formation of their subjectivity.     

‘Dulling it down a bit’: managing visibility,sexualities and risk in the Night Time Economy in Newcastle,UK

Drawing on qualitative interviews with young women in the UK, this article highlights how gendered and sexualised negotiations of visibility intersect and continue to be important in the ways in which young women self-regulate bodies and identities to manage risk in the Night Time Economy (NTE). Adopting visible markers of normative, heterosexual femininity on a night out can be understood as simultaneously mitigating against the risks of experiencing certain types of harassment, whilst increasing the risks of experiencing others. This article reaffirms the relevance of negotiations of visibility in shaping non-heterosexual women’s dress as a strategy for managing the risk of homophobic abuse and demonstrates some of the ways in which all young women – regardless of actual or perceived sexual identification – are required to police their bodies in order to manage the additional risks of ‘heterosexualised’ harassment in the NTE. These include threats of sexual violence and harassment primarily associated with women’s positioning as subordinated gendered subjects rather than with the policing of ‘non-normative’ sexualities, with findings suggesting that young women are more concerned with managing the risks associated with a heterosexualised male gaze rather than a homophobic gaze. ‘Everyday’ experiences of harassment are trivialised and normalised in bar and club spaces, and adopting markers of normative, heterosexual femininity was felt to increase the risks of receiving this kind of ‘unwanted attention’. Clearly, young women face challenges as they attempt to negotiate femininities, sexualities and safety and manage intersections of gender and sexuality in contemporary leisure spaces.