Paper short abstract:

How do Chinese migrant women construct the 'ideal' body? By crossing hegemonic and 'Eurocentric' ideals of success and beauty that circulate globally, with imaginaries of modernity and desires for integration, I seek to understand what is the influence of the experience of mobility.

Paper long abstract:

In my PhD project I propose to conduct an ethnographic study on the construction of the 'ideal' body of Chinese migrant women in Lisbon (Portugal) and the surgical and aesthetic practices they operate to achieve it.

Crossing hegemonic and 'Eurocentric' ideals of success and beauty that circulate globally, with imaginaries of modernity and desires for integration, I seek to understand what is the influence of my ethnographic experience of transnational mobility to a European country. Using qualitative methodologies (interviews, participant observation and life story reconstruction), I analyse the self-construction projects and somatic biographies of Chinese women in Lisbon.

By identifying the main practices performed and their symbolic values, my aim with this project is to understand the aesthetic imaginary of Chinese migrant women and in which aspects these references reveal the influence of the host society, origin and global narratives and to demonstrate how this self-construction not only reifies hierarchical social structures but also reflects and reproduces social variables of gender, class and race.