When disconnectivity becomes the key to living: The diasporic experiences of contemporary trans Chinese people in Europe

By focusing on the diasporic experiences of trans Chinese migrants who emigrated to Europe during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, this article illuminates the importance of recognizing the constitutive role that digital disconnectivity plays in queers’ negotiation and actualization of their queer aspirations. Findings presented in this article are drawn from qualitative data that I have collected from 2021 to 2023 through in-depth interviews with seven trans Chinese individuals residing in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This article illuminates how trans Chinese people attract increasingly intensified state censorship and unwanted familial attentions in both the online and offline realms during a time of crisis, hence perpetuating a sense of ‘otherness’ in relation to the purportedly Indigenously heteronormative Chinese society. In this context, escaping both the physical and digital territories of China become essential to circumvent state surveillance while producing alternative online images of self that cater to different audiences, so that trans Chinese migrants can actualize their desires of being/becoming queer in a nonpunitive way. In this sense, I argue that digital disconnectivity is not a symbol of backwardness but rather a tool delicately leveraged by trans Chinese migrants in their pursuit of queer life. It should therefore be conceptualized as an act of individual agency and an expression of grass roots resilience in the absence of institutional queer rights.