Queer Youth on the Move: Gentrification and the International in Beijing

Abstract

This article presents an autobiographical study of shifting queer formations in northeastern Beijing where the author participated in clubbing rituals and lived amongst members of Beijing’s queer communities. This resulted in a study of globalization and the Chinese state’s gentrification tactics which co-opt transgressive energy to infiltrate and dominate local queer spaces. Local and migrant queer bodies are using transnational means and techniques in claiming autonomy while continuously forming social spaces that subvert central power structures through affective power. These reterritorializations are then subject to global LGBT discourse, which uses gentrification of space as a form of constituting proper behaviour. Gentrification, as an international process, demands subversive energy and action in response, which ultimately defines queer youth as worthy of autonomy. These findings have research possibilities in developing Sino-queer migration within a post-positivist international relations and multiplex theory research program.