Paper short abstract:

In a context where national identity is articulated on resistance against an external aggressor, personal choices become political acts. Lauded as liberatory, ethnicity can also have an oppressive dimension for those who are forcibly included. For Mongolian women dating foreigners, this resistance against resistance remains a difficult and dangerous line to cross.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout modern history Mongols have navigated a narrow political path: wedged between Russia and China, much of their limited political power has consisted in playing one giant against the other. During the Socialist period (1921-1990), Mongols have seen their culture subjected to harsh political and cultural policies, but on the whole, Mongols argue, it was a positive experience: without Russia, Mongolia would not have been able to retain its independence and would have become part of China.

Today Mongolian identity discourse remains articulated on a notion of resistance. Nationalists are eager to insulate Mongolia (and Mongolian female bodies) from Chinese territorial and biological encroachment, and in the media as well as in discussions, anti-Chinese sentiments are explicit, often violent. However this xenophobic violence also has a centripetal effect on Mongolian society. Because identity discourses are suffused with this idea of resistance against an external enemy, contemporary Mongolianness tends to congeal into a homogenized identity that leaves little space for personal reinterpretations. Internal dissent is socially policed and stifled: the nationalist group Dayar Mongol has for example issued the warning that they would shave off the hair of women having sexual relations with Chinese men.

I argue in this paper that freedom to be ethnic can be far from liberatory for those whose voice is not heard. Many Mongolian women, with a lesser role in defining what Mongolianness is or should be, look beyond the border for professional and emotional opportunities that constitute, in effect, a resistance against resistance.