Social & Cultural Geography, 2014

Vol. 15, No. 4, 427–448, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.893703

White migrant masculinities in Thailand and the

paradoxes of Western privilege

Kristen Hill Maher1 & Megan Lafferty2

1
Department of Political Science, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego,
CA 92182, USA, kmaher@mail.sdsu.edu and 2School of Social and Political Sciences, University
of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia

This study examines the counter-paradigmatic migration of Westerners into Thailand,

focusing on men in transnational intimate relationships in the northeastern region. We
explore how the particular spaces in which they settled affected these migrants’ capacities
to perform what they saw as hegemonic masculinities over time. We find that they initially
experienced an increase in status that they were able to convert into assets in romantic
relationships, permitting them to position themselves as ‘providers’ and ‘real white men,’
drawing on masculine ideals from their home countries as well as a diffuse neocolonial
imaginary. In the long run, however, these identity constructions were subject to internal
contradictions and attrition. They were also place-bound, creating both financial and
social obstacles to a return home, particularly for those without ties to transnational
capital. The ways these patterns differ from those in existing scholarship underline how
both the particular spaces of migrant settlement and temporal dimensions are critical for
the analysis of migrant masculinities.

Key words: masculinity, migration, expatriate, Thailand, whiteness, transnational

relationships.

Introduction tages grounded in global economics and race

Even while the field of masculinity studies has
burgeoned in recent years, migration scholars
and cultural geographers have left the study
of migrant masculinities or ‘the spaces of
masculinities’ relatively underdeveloped
(Hopkins and Noble 2009; van Hoven and
Hörschelmann 2005: 5). Scholarship that does
center on the nexus of migration and
masculinity largely concentrates on men
from developing states living in the global
North.1 For this reason, theoretical claims
about migrant men largely presume disadvan-
that pose obstacles for the performance of a
valorized manhood prior to a return home
(e.g. Datta et al. 2009). The few gender-related
studies of Westerners living in the global South
focus on expatriate professionals (Farrer
2010; Lan 2011; Leonard 2010; Walsh 2007,
2011), who occupy cosmopolitan spaces in
global cities and often remain quite segregated
from native populations. By contrast, this
study focuses on a counter-paradigmatic
migration of Westerners into Thailand, men
who are largely not linked to global capital or
living in global cities, instead settling near the

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

428 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
home communities of their Thai partners or
wives. This focus permits us to better examine
how the particular spaces in which migrant
men settle shape their capacities to perform
what they see as hegemonic masculinities2
over time.
Thailand is one of the global locations most
marked by men’s migration from developed
states, comprising retirees as well as tourists or
business travelers who settle after finding a
Thai partner. While many do settle in Bangkok
and tourist centers such as Pattaya, others
move to their partner’s home province, a
phenomenon that has generated a burgeoning
population of Western men even in rural areas.
Based on fieldwork in Isan, the northeastern
region of Thailand, we examine the range of
strategies male migrants use to position
themselves in local social hierarchies when
their relocation is tied to relationships rather
than work, and when they settle outside of
cosmopolitan tourist centers. We are particu-
larly attentive to how the resources and
constraints that arose for the production of
valorized masculinities shifted over time.
Both spatial and temporal dimensions
proved to be important. The migrants in our
sample did initially experience a sense of
empowerment and increased status as men,
grounded largely in the ways the meanings of
their race, class, gender, age, and body type all
shifted in the transnational move. They
experienced increased assets in erotic and
romantic relationships that enabled perform-
ances of masculine subjectivities (e.g. as a
‘player’ or ‘provider’) that would not have
been possible back home. The masculine
identities they created in this space drew
upon scripts of hegemonic masculinity from
their home countries and neocolonial imagin-
aries about what it means to be ‘white men,’ at
the same time as migrants also created new,
local masculine cultures that served to create
bonds of community. However, these mascu-
line identities and performances were not
mobile: instead, they were specific to tourist
regions and the social context in the northeast
region of Isan,3 and to some extent even to the
micro-geography (Malam 2008) of expatriate
bars and clubs. In this regard, the geographies
that mattered were not simply global North
and South, but much more complex and local
social landscapes. In addition, the very ways
migrants positioned themselves as white men
in Isan were marked by contradictions that
tended to produce new forms of vulnerability
and immobility over time.
Masculinities and migration
Migration inevitably transforms gender
relations and identities, as migrants encounter
new gendered cultures and occupy new
locations in a ‘gendered geography of power’
(Mahler and Pessar 2001; Leonard 2010; van
Hoven and Meijering 2005). Although scho-
lars examining these transformations initially
focused on female migrants, we now see an
emergent literature on masculinities and
migration. Following theory developed in the
broader literature on masculinities, scholars in
this field presume that masculinities are
diverse and that different gendered hierarchies
develop in different local contexts (Connell
and Messerschmidt 2005; Hopkins and Noble
2009; Walsh 2011). Such local constructions
involve not only the production of inequality
between masculinity and femininity, but also
between different masculine styles that vie for
a valorized cultural position by feminizing
others, especially those of other social classes,
ages, races, nationalities and sexualities
(Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; van
Hoven and Hörschelmann 2005). Men who
migrate transnationally therefore encounter a

new terrain of gender hierarchies and must
negotiate their own gendered, classed, racia-
lized, and nationalized positions within them
(Datta et al. 2009; Hopkins and Noble 2009;
Leonard 2010; Walsh 2011). How they do
so—for instance, by ‘drawing upon fragments
or pieces of hegemonic masculinity which they
have the capacity to perform’ (Coles 2008:
238)—is a central focus in the study of migrant
masculinities.
Most of the study on migrant masculinities to
date has focused on migrants from developing
states engaged in low-paid, unskilled work in
wealthier countries (e.g. Batnitzky, McDowell
and Dyer 2009; Boehm 2008; Broughton 2008;
Datta et al. 2009; Hondagneu-Sotelo and
Messner 1994; Kitiarsa 2012; Osella and Osella
2000), where they experience lack of control
and occupy a low status and/or feminized
position in the labor market that they struggle to
reconcile with a sense of valorized manhood.
Such migrants may draw on scripts of hegemo-
nic masculinity from home to position them-
selves as ‘adventurers’ or ‘breadwinners’
(Broughton 2008), or as ‘successful tricksters,
lovers or womanizers’ in sexual encounters with
other migrants (Kitiarsa 2012: 52). At the same
time, migration can permit men to build their
masculine credentials back home through dis-
plays of cash wealth or cosmopolitanism upon
their return (Boehm 2008; Osella and Osella
2000).
The less-numerous studies on masculinities
among educated or high-skilled migrants have
also largely focused on those moving towards
more developed economies such as Indian IT
professionals in Germany (van Hoven and
Meijering 2005) and Chinese skilled migrants
in Australia (Hibbins 2005). Because these
migrants were often unwilling or unable to
participate in locally dominant expressions of
masculinity, they tended to remain in ethni-
cally insular communities, socializing over
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 429
food at home (van Hoven and Meijering 2005)
or reasserting a patriarchal structure within
their families (Hibbins 2005). Regardless of
class and education, men migrating into the
global North often experience downward
social mobility and social marginalization
(Datta et al. 2009) and hence tend to define
their manhood in reference to the gender
ideals of their home community and their
status within it.
Far less scholarly work has examined the
growing migration out of the so-called global
North into less-developed states, leaving ‘an
evident and urgent need to develop nuanced
understandings of these more privileged tiers
of movement and to problematize them’
(Fechter and Walsh 2010: 1198). Westerners
have been particularly invisible as migrants, in
part because they tend to self-identify as
expatriates4 and because scholars have tended
to label them as mobile professionals or
cosmopolitans (Lan 2011). Instead, we
explore how both their positions of privilege
and their disadvantages as migrants are
shaped by their gender, race, and class
locations in both local and global economies.
Although there has been virtually no work
done on Western migrant masculinities,
several bodies of scholarship offer more
general insight into the complex social
locations and identity constructions of Wester-
ners moving into developing states. Scholars
examining migrations of white Westerners
through a postcolonial lens identify how a
postcolonial imaginary circulates among
them, reflecting ‘an essentialist binary and
hierarchical opposition: Occident/Orient’
(Coles and Walsh 2010: 1319) as well as
narratives of racial difference and white male
superiority (Leonard 2010). They argue that
Western migrants of various nationalities might
draw upon (or reject) this collective imperial
imagination as they situate themselves in the
430 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
developing world, and that their capacity to do
so is not necessarily linked to particular
colonial histories (Coles and Walsh 2010;
Farrer 2010; Fechter and Walsh 2010; Leonard
2010). However, the substantial class diversity
among Western migrants shapes their actual
reception and capacities to tap into such post-
colonial narratives (Farrer 2010; Fechter and
Walsh 2010).
Several recent studies examine high-skilled
and professional Western migrant commu-
nities in global cities such as Shanghai (Farrer
2010) and Taiwan (Lan 2011). They agree that
there are substantial class differences between
those tied to the movements of global capital
and those who moved on their own initiative
to teach English, who are derided as ‘losers’
and ‘low-quality foreigners’ by both natives
and higher-class migrants (Farrer 2010).
Nonetheless, Lan (2011) argues that the
widespread conflation of whiteness with
Westernness and modernity in Taiwan makes
white privilege omnipresent in that context.
She notes that, for men, this privilege
converted into ‘assets and advantages in the
field of romance and marriage . . . in
comparison to their dating experiences back
home’ (1685 – 1686). These studies begin to
illustrate how Western privilege varies by
class, but they lack any attention to how it
may vary across space or shift over time, both
central concerns in our analysis.
More attentive to spatial issues is a growing
body of scholarship that examines how men
from developed economies constitute their
own masculine and racial identities in transna-
tional intimate encounters in the liminal
spaces of leisure or tourism. According to
Collins (2009), gay Western expatriates in
Manila interpreted the attention they received
from gay Filipinos as an affirmation of their
attractiveness and talked of their self-actuali-
zation as gay men in this context, even as their
sexual imperialism ‘silence[d] host men’s
desires and subjectivities’ (469). Similarly,
Taiwanese businessmen at work in Special
Economic Zones in China engaged in rituals of
‘consuming’ Chinese women as a means of
marking their capitalist manhood and status in
a transnational business class (Shen 2008).
The most developed literature in this vein
focuses on the ways in which Western male sex
tourists constitute themselves as masculine
and racialized subjects through relations with
women in the host countries. They particularly
note how the exercise of power, domination,
or control becomes possible for men in sex
tourism encounters that would not be avail-
able to them back home, in part because
Western currencies go further (e.g.Gregory
2003; O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez
Taylor 1999). Sex tourism destinations func-
tion as a theme park or ‘Adventure Zone for
adults’ that permits men to not just be
entertained as tourists but also to breach
Western social taboos and constitute them-
selves as boyish adventurers (Broinowski
1992; Gregory 2003). These landscapes are
an example of the kinds of liminal spaces in
which ‘performances of sexual freedom’ are
made possible by the sense of being far from
home and its norms of behavior (Walsh 2007:
510).
The above studies on transient transnational
sexual encounters suggest that there are
particular spaces in developing countries
(tourist districts, Special Economic Zones,
certain bar scenes) in which there are semi-
scripted rituals of sexualized interaction that
permit those coming from comparatively
powerful economies to ‘realize’ their identity
and privilege along the lines of gender, class,
sexuality, race, nationality, and global econ-
omic position, as well as to experiment with
new scripts of gendered performance. This is
an important point of insight; however, we

cannot infer from such studies how these
newly constituted subjectivities play out in
other social spaces or over time in longer-term
intimate relationships. Our analysis aims to
explore this temporal dimension as well as
how settling with Thai partners in spaces
outside of sex tourism enclaves presents
different sets of resources, capacities, and
constraints for the production of masculine
identities.
A political economy of sex and migration
The story of how the Isan region of Thailand
has become populated with Western men
relates to the development of Thailand’s sex
tourism markets, a history that continues to
shape the position of Western men who settle
there. Thailand was never colonized, but it
experienced significant influence of the West
starting in the mid-nineteenth century, in part
via ruling elites who embraced aspects of
Western culture and trade as part of their own
path to modernity and as a means to centralize
power (Harrison 2010). In the 1950s, foreign-
educated technocrats began a process of
opening Thailand to international lending,
transnational capital, and the U.S. military
(Truong 1990). The World Bank provided
loans for Thailand to build up its infrastruc-
ture to stimulate investment in a new tourism
industry, and the USA established military
bases in Thailand as part of its Cold War
strategy in the region, placing most of its
troops in the northeastern region of Isan.
Military bases were surrounded by brothels
and bars, where thousands of Isan women
worked in industries serving American sol-
diers. In addition, the USA negotiated a treaty
allowing U.S. soldiers stationed in Vietnam to
come on Rest & Recreation (R&R) leave
to Thailand (Truong 1990), largely coming to
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 431
Bangkok and the nearby beach town Pattaya.
Prostitution in Thailand did not begin with
U.S. military bases or R&R practices, but
American military men changed its public
display as they walked openly with ‘rented
wives’ down main streets (Van Esterik 2000:
175).
When U.S. troops began withdrawing from
the region, the industries that depended on
soldiers withered, and Thai officials nego-
tiated an agreement with the World Bank to
transform the entertainment industry created
for R&R into a global tourist industry
(Truong 1990; Van Esterik 2000). The Tour-
ism Authority of Thailand (TAT) played a role
in generating sex tourism, beginning with ‘the
“1987 Visit Thailand Year” campaign, which
clearly targeted the traveler interested in
sexual experience’ (Hamilton 1997: 148),
and continuing thereafter by using images of
beautiful young women to represent Thai-
land’s character and tourist appeal. Even once
the state began to officially discourage sex
tourism, the industry continued to expand,
catering to male tourists from the Middle East,
North America, Europe and Asia (Hamilton
1997; Van Esterik 2000). R&R visits to
Thailand began in the corporate realm, as
companies with workforces comprised of
single males working in isolated areas ‘pro-
vide[d] holidays in Thailand as part of their
“rest and recreation” conditions’ (Hamilton
1997: 149).
The sex tourism industry has wide-ranging
effects within Thailand, one of which is that it
entails a rural-to-urban migration of young
women from marginalized groups. Many of
the women who work in the tourist-oriented
sex and service industries around Bangkok and
Pattaya have migrated from the northeastern
region of Isan, with an ethnic Lao majority
that is racialized as dark, indigenous,
and culturally unsophisticated by urban,
432 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
lighter-skinned Thais (Cohen 2003; Lyttleton
1994; Mills 2005). As Thai development
policies have disrupted subsistence farming in
Isan, it has become a source of internal
migrants, especially among unmarried women
between the ages of 15 and 25 (Mills 2005),
who find work in factories, domestic service,
and in services related to tourism.
Internal migration and marriage to
foreigners have gained respectability among
the rural lower classes as means for dutiful
daughters to provide long-term financial
support for their extended families (Cohen
2003; Esara 2009; Howard 2009; Sunanta and
Angeles 2013). A Khon Kaen University study
found that when asked what they want for
their daughters, 90 per cent of the respondents
in the rural Northeast replied, ‘I want for them
to marry a foreigner’ (cited in Bernstein 2007).
Although the sex industry is widely disparaged
within Thailand, the earnings from work in
sex tourism can be up to twenty-five times
greater than those in other jobs open to rural
women such as factory work (Askew 1999),
and tourist enclaves are among the most likely
places for a young woman to meet Western
men. Migrations to tourist districts and the
relationships that ensue rest not just on
economics, but also on racialized ‘cartogra-
phies of desire’ (Constable 2003), in which
women in various contexts imagine white
Western masculinity as progressive, modern,
or an agent of liberation (Constable 2003; Kim
2006; Schaeffer-Grabiel 2004), and envision a
union with a Western man as a means to
produce a self-identity as a worldly person
(Bulloch and Fabinyi 2009). Dark-skinned
Isan women who would be dismissed as
‘inherently unattractive’ (Askew 1999) by
urban Thai men or who would be rejected on
the basis of having been married before
imagine Western men as ideal mates who
recognize their beauty (Esara 2009) and accept
their past. While the decision to marry a
Westerner has become widely accepted in Isan,
it is disparaged by urban nationalists who have
long constructed rural women as the keepers
of Thai tradition and who condemn those who
reject this role as immoral materialists
(Sunanta 2009).
In the sex tourism locales of Thailand (as in
other developing states), the monetary trans-
fers that accompany erotic relationships with
tourists are not always overtly commercial;
instead of immediate demand for payment,
they may involve later entreaties for money to
pay rent or help family members with a
financial crisis (Cohen 2003). In this regard,
men who do not identify as sex tourists can
enter into ambiguously commercial relation-
ships with women who do not frame the
exchange as sex work (O’Connell Davidson
and Sanchez Taylor 1999). Connections that
begin this way can transform into longer-term
relationships and marriages that result in the
settlement of white Westerners—locally
known as ‘farang’5—near their partners’
families in rural Thailand. As Western cash
flows through rural communities, other locals
experience relative deprivation and come to
want a farang in the family as a route to
economic and social mobility. A 2003 survey
found more than 19,600 women married to
European men in Isan alone; in the Nakorn
Rachasima province, 21 per cent of all
marriages were Thai-farang (Limanonda
2007).
Of course, Western men living in Thailand
also meet and enter into long-term relation-
ships with Thai women in contexts entirely
unconnected to transnational encounters in
tourist districts. Bangkok is a global city with a
diverse population of expatriates. However,
the pattern of Thai-farang relationships
initiated in tourist districts is so prevalent
that women from the urban middle class fear

that marrying a Western man will tarnish their
social status (Hamilton 1997). Similarly,
Western men with Thai partners encounter
the stigma of a ‘sexpat’ reputation, no matter
how the relationship actually began.
White Westerners in Thailand occupy
complex and varied social positions. As the
‘West’ emerged as the key reference point
against which to chart Thai modernity, it
became the object of an Occidentalist gaze (a
reverse of Said’s Orientalism), holding an
‘ambiguous allure’ that has moved from its
elite origins into mass media and popular
culture (Harrison 2010; Kitiarsa 2010). The
mixed race children of Thai – farang relation-
ships (luk khreung), who used to be ostracized
as products of prostitution, have come to be
adopted ‘as representatives of a modern form
of Thainess,’ becoming celebrated actors and
actresses, supermodels, and pop singers
(Kitiarsa 2010: 72). At the same time, luk
khreung can find themselves positioned as not
fully Thai, both adored and Othered within a
Thai cultural nationalism that has long defined
itself in opposition to the West (Winichakul
2008). The very label ‘farang’ represents the
‘other within,’ identified by its ‘un-Thainess’
(Kitiarsa 2010; Winichakul 1994, 2010).
According to Winichakul (2010: 135), the
relationship between Thailand and the West is
one marked by paradoxical desires: ‘how to
catch up with the West without “kissing the
asses of the farang” (tom kon farang); . . .
how not to love the West despite its
attractions; and how not to hate it despite
its obnoxious dominance.’ Anti-West senti-
ment and complaints about corrupting farang
influence (Kitiarsa 2010) are particularly
common among elites and urbanites, ironi-
cally the sectors that are most westernized
and consumerist, and perhaps therefore most
eager to ‘assert their Thai-ness, or at least
their appreciation of it’ (Winichakul 2008:
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 433
586). There is also complexity in the social
position of farang migrants insofar as they are
a varied lot by class, age, nationality, and
behavior. Even while the figure of ‘the West’
may be the object of ambivalent desire,
particular Western migrants differ in their
reception across social and geographic spaces
within Thailand, as we examine in the
following analysis.
Methods: farang in Thailand
Thailand is a particularly interesting case in
which to consider migrant masculinities, as
the vast majority of Western settlers there are
men. Howard (2009) estimated that there
were 100,000 Westerners in Thailand in the
mid-2000s, with the largest proportions
coming from the UK, Germany, the USA, the
Netherlands, France, Canada, and Australia.
His 2005 – 2006 online survey of 1,003 white
Westerners who lived in Thailand found that
virtually all were men (96.6 per cent), and
nearly half were married to a Thai or had a
live-in Thai partner. About a quarter had come
to fill an ‘expat job’; others had come initially
as tourists and ended up staying or returning,
and some had come as retirees. They were
generally well educated, and 70 per cent lived
in the tourist locales or Bangkok, with smaller
proportions living in more remote provinces
(Howard 2009).
The material we analyze below comes from
two field studies by Megan Lafferty grounded
in mixed qualitative methods (Meth and
McClymont 2009): first, a set of interviews
in 2007 – 2008 in Thailand, and second, eleven
months of ethnographic fieldwork set in the
Isan region in 2011 – 2012. The initial quali-
tative interviews were conducted in person
with thirteen Western migrant men in transna-
tional relationships, most of whom were
434 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
recruited via ads placed in local forums of
Thaivisa.com, a web site designed for Wester-
ners living in Thailand. The later ethnographic
fieldwork involved participant observation at
farang social gatherings, bars, and restaurants,
informal interviews, and participation in daily
activities with Western men and their social
and kin networks. Lafferty’s position as a
relatively young, heterosexual, white Amer-
ican woman who shared language, cultural
references, and experiences as a farang
facilitated access and rapport. On the other
hand, her age and gender set her apart and
presented a challenge to gain access into
men’s social groups. Some men initially
questioned the intent of her research, wary
that she ‘had some feminist agenda to push’
while others half-jokingly referred to her as
an undercover tax collector or sex spy. Over
time, Lafferty earned trust through repeated
contact and reciprocal participation, offering
as much information about herself as she was
asking from informants. She also engaged in
masculine behaviors such as bar banter and
drinking beer, activities that allowed access
to the bar scene central to male farang
communities. She continued to occupy a
complex gendered position, but many infor-
mants came to speak of her as ‘one of the
guys’ and invited her into other masculine
circles such as fraternal clubs.
We focus here on thirty male informants
who were in relationships with Thai
women at the time of the study. Almost
half of the migrants in our sample came
from the UK; another quarter were from
the USA; and others were European or
Australian. Eighty per cent had lived in
Thailand less than 10 years. All were white
and heterosexual, as is virtually the entire
farang population in Isan,6 and 67 per cent
were 55 years of age or older. Seventy per
cent had few or no language skills in Thai;
men with high skills tended to be younger.
These demographics resemble those in
Howard’s survey, except that our sample
focuses on migrants with Thai partners,
primarily living in Isan.
In striking contrast to existing studies on
Western expatriates, none of our informants
had transferred to Thailand for work; instead,
their migration was informed primarily by
relationships and what they presented as
lifestyle choices. Three-quarters of our infor-
mants moved to Thailand to be with a Thai
partner they had met on holiday or migrated
with a Thai spouse they met elsewhere. Others
moved without a partner or job but with hopes
of finding both. About a quarter of our
informants were retired and living on pension
funds.
Only four of our informants occupied a
cosmopolitan class position grounded in their
connections to global capital through employ-
ment or pensions with a transnational com-
pany; fewer migrants of this class live in Isan
than in cities like Bangkok where corporations
are based. The others (87 per cent) had more
modest financial standing and did not come
from a position of class privilege. They
included migrants living off a modest pension,
those who found work in a local company
after they moved to Thailand (e.g. as English
teachers), and entrepreneurs who ran
businesses catering to Western residents or
tourists. Two of our informants were particu-
larly marginal economically, having struggled
financially back home as well as in Thailand;
one was in trouble with the law. While they
did have local employment, these two were
viewed by Thais and other Westerners as
heavy drinkers and losers. These variations in
class position shaped our informants’ social
reception, transnational mobility, and
capacities to produce various masculine
identities.

‘I’ve just been in the wrong place’:
becoming a real white man
All of our informants experienced at least
an initial increase in status and capacity to
perform more empowered masculine identities
as they moved to Thailand. Their Western
currencies went further, and many of them
experienced a sense of emancipation from
social norms at home that had marginalized
them as men based on class, age, body type, or
physical appearance. In some contexts, they
also found that their whiteness garnered
attention, social respect, and advantages in
romantic relationships. Even while elite Thais
in major cities widely disparage farang tourists
and migrants, historically marginalized popu-
lations in Isan tend to grant special status to
light-skinned outsiders, reading them as
modern or wealthy. For this reason, farang
men in Isan initially experienced a sense of
Western privilege similar to that in the tourist
zones. As a former librarian from England in
his 40s living in Isan frankly articulated:
You can see the farangs—in England or wherever,
they would be a no one. Then they come to Pattaya,
maybe even myself as well. You know, you’re not a
big fish, but you come to Pattaya with your money,
whatever. [ . . . ] These people [villagers in Isan] will
walk past me and try to be lower than me. Have you
noticed that? They think I’m better than them.
(Edward)
Within spaces such as Isan and the Pattaya
tourist zone, our informants found they had
additional resources for performing dominant
masculinities and constituting themselves as
privileged white men.
A key dimension of their privilege as
Westerners in such spaces was how it could
convert into assets in erotic or romantic
relationships in ways that enabled perform-
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 435
ances of a masculine identity as a ‘player,’ or
alternately, as a ‘provider’ and patriarch in a
family. For some older men, these identities
rested on their access to younger women.
A 56-year-old American (Charley) said that in
the USA,
you don’t have age differences like 50-year-old men
with 20-year-old women—it just doesn’t happen.
Only if he’s a billionaire and she’s a trophy wife. I
say I have a trophy wife too; it’s just she’s 4 foot 11.
For having a trophy wife, I get off very cheap.
Along the same lines, a 64-year-old Norwe-
gian (Johan) lived with a 35-year-old woman
(Ying). He downplayed her caretaking labor,
saying that she just had to ‘prance around
looking pretty,’ and in return, he gave her a
‘stipend’ of 15,000 baht (US$500) per month.
When his friends and family asked about him,
he sent them a photo of Ying posing in skimpy
clothes on a motorcycle, and said with a laugh,
‘see, I’m doing just fine.’ Both men emphasized
their partners’ youth and beauty as part of
their masculine and class identity perform-
ance. Of course, social networks back home
may not have received this performance as
intended: most of our informants said that
their families had hesitations or judgments
about their lifestyle. The ‘sexpat’ stigma is a
transnational construction, such that local
farang communities may have been the only
context in which such masculine performances
were valorized.
However, within this local context, men of
an age and body type who had been margin-
alized by hegemonic masculine ideals back
home (see Calasanti and King 2005) found
them less limiting. A 68-year-old named
Paul said that in the USA ‘attractive women
[ . . . ] don’t particularly like old fat men,’
but in Thailand, ‘I could find me a very
attractive woman and live very comfortably.’
436 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
A 48-year-old from London (James) articu-
lated similar themes but also emphasized shifts
in the gender order in the UK as key to his
migration, describing the appeal of a place
where an older Western man can reclaim his
masculinity within a relationship:
Ok, so a guy’s 50, he’s overweight, he’s losing his
hair—it doesn’t make him any less of a man. He’s
had a few failed marriages because he can’t adjust to
being the ‘new man,’ modern man, whatever you
call it. I think some of them want a traditional
marriage. [ . . . ] Maybe the women’s careers become
important. I think a lot of us guys find it hard to
adjust to the demands of Western women. [ . . . ]
[Here,] we feel we’re in charge of marriage, we’re
the breadwinner.
James actively sought a relationship in
which there would be an economic and age
differential in order to perform a masculine
identity as a ‘breadwinner’ who was ‘in charge
of marriage’ and did not need to make
concessions for a woman’s career as he had
been asked to do by women in the UK. His
interview reprised a widespread critique of
Western women who had become ‘less
feminine’ and made it harder to feel like a
‘man.’ In contrast, our informants presented
Isan as a context in which they experienced
greater economic power, more sexual atten-
tion, and (in some instances) greater patri-
archal control in relationships, all factors
contributing to their performance of what they
saw as a valorized masculinity. This account
largely parallels studies of Western male
tourists who interpret the increased sexual
attention and power they experience in sex
tourism districts as a validation of their
attractiveness and value as men (Collins
2009; Gregory 2003). As a British bar
manager named Simon observed, Western
men get attention from women in Thailand,
and then they think, ‘I knew I was attractive all
along. I’ve just been in the wrong place.’
Their production of masculine identities
also rested on a racialized construction of Thai
men, against whom virtually every informant
compared himself favorably. Because most of
our informants were not socially integrated
into Thai culture, their understandings of Thai
masculinity tended to reflect the narratives of
their Thai partners, many of whom critiqued
former Thai lovers for failing to be responsible
family providers, a key normative masculine
ideal in Thailand, according to Malam (2008).
Western migrants drew on these stories about
former Thai partners’ failings as men in order
to produce a broader racialized narrative
about Thai men as unfaithful, lazy, and
unreliable, against which they could position
themselves as responsible providers. They also
positioned themselves as superior and desir-
able by drawing on a Western masculine ideal
centered on body size and hair, feeding a
discourse about Thai men as feminine, small,
and weak; this discourse ignored Thai mascu-
line norms in which behaviors matter more
than body size. Many thought it natural for
Thai women to be attracted to them but
expressed puzzlement about how any Western
woman could find a Thai man attractive or
adequate as a lover. Such stories illustrate how
farang men strategically adopted fragments of
whatever masculine ideals would permit them
to position themselves not just as ‘real men’
but also as racially superior white men, a
construction informed in part by neo-colonial
imaginaries.
Paradoxically, the Thai context permitted
some migrants to produce an identity as a ‘real
white man’ in ways that would not have been
possible back home, given the ways that
official multiculturalism and immigration had
transformed the racial and cultural landscapes
there. A 49-year-old Englishman named Bill

repeated the story of visiting a government
office prior to his migration and having it be
filled with Afghan men with turbans. He also
talked about how his nephew went to public
school and was one of only two or three
‘English’ children in his class, with an ‘Indian’
teacher. Bill said, ‘You might as well be a
foreigner in a foreign country than a foreigner
in your own country. In Thailand, you have
more freedom being a foreigner.’ As an
expatriate in Isan, Bill could embrace his
own nostalgic ideal of what it meant to be a
white Englishman.
One place this white male expatriate
identity played out was in fraternal clubs,
such as Freemasons, golf clubs, or the Hash
House Harriers. The latter organization has its
roots in colonial Malaysia, begun by British
expatriates. Seven of our informants of
various nationalities participated in monthly
Hashes, events that combined running, beer
drinking, and rituals of playful hazing. The
participants all took on unflattering nick-
names and took turns chugging beer in the
center of a circle after being accused of things
they had done wrong or too well. Members of
this club tended to be among the wealthiest
and least culturally integrated informants in
our sample, who had all had successful
professional careers and were between 55
and 69 years old. Some adopted neocolonial
styles of dress and housing, and most spoke
very little to no Thai. Migrants adopting these
kinds of practices were not grounding their
neocolonial identity in Thailand’s particular
history, but rather in a more general historical
imaginary.
A similar masculine culture of pranks and
drinking took place in bars patronized by (and
often run by) farang men across social classes.
In contrast to the hegemonic masculinities
Walsh (2011) found among British expatriate
communities in Dubai that centered around
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 437
paid work and careers, masculine cultures in
farang migrant communities in Isan tended to
center around beer drinking, girl watching,
and horseplay. In a context where many farang
migrants were retired or employed in femin-
ized jobs such as teaching, and where there
was considerable national and class diversity,
it makes sense that hegemonic masculinities
would not valorize careers as much as mascu-
line bonding practices. Not all men partici-
pated in this culture to the same extent; some
instead focusing on domestic life, working on
their house or garden, but they spoke of their
relative social isolation as a consequence.
Another source of connection among men
who never would have associated with each
other back home was a common identity as
adventurers, the kind of men who take
chances with their money, their futures, and
their emotions. As a working-class man from
England (Doug) explained, ‘it takes a certain
amount of bottle to give up fifty years of your
own culture and overnight change to some-
thing else.’ As we discuss later, the men with
the least resources were in fact taking
substantial financial risks, and there was a
common narrative about the risks of relation-
ships with Thai women. Doug explained,
‘They take the risk that everyone knows
about, but they are [like], “I’ll take my
chances, thanks!”’ Every farang man in Isan
was able to make claims on this expression of
masculinity by virtue of his presence there, and
it facilitated at least superficial bonds across
class and national divisions.
In sum, white Western men settled in Isan
found that the meanings of their race and body
type as well as the relative value of their
financial assets transformed with the shift in
geographic context in ways that permitted
them to constitute themselves differently as
masculine and racial subjects. Most were able
to convert their relative privilege as white
438 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
Westerners into assets in intimate relationships
with Thai women and to fulfill their own ideal
as a masculine ‘provider’ for a family, even on
fairly modest pensions or incomes. These
masculine ideals intersected with racial and
national identities, insofar as they rested on a
sense of superiority to Thai women and men
and were informed by a neocolonial (often
nostalgic) imaginary about what it means to
be a ‘real white man’ or privileged Western
expatriate. This identity developed and was
validated within farang communities that
bridged class lines through male bonding
practices and discourses about risk-taking
and adventure. However, as the next section
explores, migrants’ privilege and perform-
ances of dominant masculine identities eroded
over time, with more pronounced differences
across classes.
The double-edged sword
Westerners who settled in Thailand outside
of tourist districts ended up in a much more
complex position than that of temporary
visitors: the new masculine selves they
produced were contingent, unstable, and
subject to attrition over time. Some of their
experiences paralleled those of other
migrants upon displacement from a home
culture and citizenship regime, such as a
sense of social isolation and the legal
disadvantages that can shift dynamics of
power in relationships with those native to
the country. However, we also identify how
some of the very bases of farang privilege in
Isan tended to undermine their potential for
social incorporation, the trust and intimacy
of their relationships, and some migrants’
potential for return home. These latter
patterns depart from the experiences of
migrants from developing states.
Social isolation
The men in our study commonly reported a
sense of social isolation stemming from
barriers or tensions in their relationships.
Many had developed a separate social life
from that of their Thai partner, particularly
those with few language skills in Thai or the
Isan dialect, and whose Thai partners and
social connections had limited skills in
English. In this regard, their experiences
resembled those of migrants anywhere. How-
ever, it was not simply the issue of language
that could produce social isolation, but also
the stereotypes and expectations that
accompanied farang status. The same cultural
and racial essentialism that underlay the status
and privilege of being a white Westerner in
Isan could also set a migrant apart socially,
reducing him to a caricature, ‘just another
farang.’ This experience occurred particularly
in cases where a migrant settled with his
partner or wife near her family, following the
matrilocal tradition in Isan. These couples
needed to negotiate expectations of dutiful
daughters and financial support for family. In
such instances, our informants reported that
they felt like their relationships with Thais
tended to center on their farang status and the
financial support they could offer rather than
developing into friendships grounded in
familiarity, affection, or mutuality.
Outside of rural Isan, some migrants also
articulated a sense of marginalization as
racially othered foreigners, given more preva-
lent anti-Western sentiment. Their social
reception rested on location as well as their
class status and behavior. In urban areas,
middle- or upper-class Thais tend to disparage
farangs who appear to be poor, are sloppily
dressed, do not act respectably, or do not
spend their money freely, calling them kee nok
(bird shit). Westerners whose introduction to

Thailand had been in tourist zones where
‘anything goes’ encountered very different
reactions when they engaged in similar
behaviors outside these spaces, and some of
our informants interpreted these reactions as a
general dislike for farangs rather than a
reflection of their violation of cultural norms.
Many of our informants dealt with these
various bases of social alienation by emphasiz-
ing their foreignness and, aside from Thai
partners, socializing primarily with Wester-
ners. James said he had no desire to assimilate
but also blamed Thai society for his exclusion:
‘As long as I’m here they’ll never accept me as
anything other than a foreigner, even though
I’m married here, I have a business here, I’ve
got a child here.’ James raised a key point:
even farang men who tried to assimilate into
Thai culture would be socially marginalized as
perpetual foreigners. By identifying as expats,
they occupy a more privileged position as
Western outsiders than they would if they
identified as immigrants who have come to
Thailand to join their wives’ families. This
reality may help explain the appeal of the
performances of a neocolonial expatriate
masculinity detailed in the previous section.
However, even the relationships that devel-
oped between Westerners could be double-
sided. On one hand, other Westerners could
provide a place of cultural belonging and a key
audience to validate performances of mascu-
linities. On the other hand, relationships
between farang men were often marked by
distrust, competition, and insults, because
there were always tensions over which forms
of masculinity were hegemonic within farang
communities. Some ridiculed those who had
greater language skills or cultural integration
in Thailand, either feminizing this trait as
something a real man should not have to do or
else labeling it arrogance and an attempt to
show off. Single men made fun of men in
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 439
relationships for spending too much time with
their girlfriends or wives. The construction of
hegemonic masculinities among Western
migrants was a process marked by contesta-
tion, which formed a barrier to trust and
friendship. Overall, many of the farang men in
our study lacked close social relationships: the
very places in which they could gain status as
men could also leave them in a world apart.
‘I’m sure she loves the likes of me’:
uncertain intimate relationships
As discussed earlier, some men interpreted
their relationships with younger Thai women
as an affirmation of their attractiveness and
tended to explain their own appeal as
grounded in being superior lovers compared
to Thai men. However, this affirmation proved
to be fragile and prone to doubt over time as
the role of money in their relationships arose
as a source of widespread anxiety.
In part, such insecurities were fed by
popular representations of Asian women that
have emerged from the conflict between
Western fantasies and anxieties: on one hand,
Asian women have been popularly represented
as innocents from the countryside, delicate
Lotus Blossoms who make ideal wives, and
on the other, they have been constructed as
whores and Dragon Ladies, scammers who are
just after money (Constable 2003; Hamilton
1997). Cohen describes various stories appear-
ing in the Western press of Thai women,
depicting them as ‘professional tricksters, who
repeatedly married, or promised to marry,
foreign men and abandoned them after
relieving them of considerable sums of
money’ (2003: 67). We have seen such stories
reproduced in discussions among farang men,
both in person and online, and in the fiction
written by farang authors.
440 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
Another reason that insecurities about love
and money arose over time was that the first-
world currency that enabled middle- or
working-class tourists to live the high life
while on holiday did not last forever.
Particularly, if a man understood his marriage
to be grounded in part on the desire for
financial security, he might fear that his Thai
partner would leave him in the future for
someone who was a more secure provider.
Despite Edward’s generally positive assess-
ment of his own two-year marriage, he
pondered aloud whether his wife had genuine
emotional ties to him:
Nat always tells me she loves me. Every day she tells
me, “have I told you I love you today?” And I do
hope she does. I know she did it for an economic
reason. I know she has a past, but I’ve got a past.
[ . . . ] You know, I mean, that’s not an issue with me.
She instigates sex; it doesn’t always come from me.
If she didn’t love me, would she do that? Probably
not. There is an age gap and whatever, and I was
worried about that.
Aware of economic circumstances and uneasy
about the age difference, Edward said he
trusted Nat, but he still felt uncertain about
whether she loved him as an individual or for
what he could provide: ‘She says she loves me,
and I’m sure she loves the likes of me. Maybe
she loves me. I don’t know. I hope so.’
Nigel, a 56-year-old Englishman, had come
to Thailand to make a fresh start after he
went through a divorce back home. Wary of
‘meeting a woman who would only want to be
looked after,’ Nigel used an online dating
service to search for a well-educated woman
from a middle-class background. After corre-
sponding with women for about four months,
he ‘narrowed it down to Lin,’ his 30-year-old
wife who had a bachelor’s degree and worked
for an insurance company. Despite their
similar education and class standing, Nigel
raised concerns about his wife’s motives:
People hear that Thai girls are targeting Western
husbands purely for the economic gain. I think for a
Thai woman [ . . . ] that the financial security does
play a bigger part of the relationship, certainly
initially than in the West. [ . . . ] Not that I’m bad
looking, but I’m quite sure she could do better than
me in the looks department. Part of the attraction to
her has been that I can provide security to her [ . . . ]
But I do see [ . . . ] the genuine parts of the
relationship evolve between us. Silly things like
she’ll wake up the middle of the night and roll over
and put her arms around me. And that’s almost in
her sleep. That’s not something you do with
someone you don’t share deep feelings with.
Here, Nigel frames the role of material
security in opposition to ‘the genuine parts of
the relationship,’ such that the fact that Lin
valued security left him looking for evidence of
authentic emotion.
Of course, financially strategic relationships
can deepen and last, and there is no reason to
assume that women who enter into such
relationships do not also hope for love.7 Part
of the farang insecurity in this context surely
derives from Western notions of love and
marriage that consider true love and economic
transactions to be incompatible (Constable
2003; Zelizer 2000). The monetary transfers
that have traditionally accompanied Western
sexual relationships, such as men buying
expensive gifts or paying the bill on dates,
have instead been carefully packaged as
romance. For this reason, men who accept
the dichotomy of marriages as grounded either
in opportunism or authentic emotion may
struggle to reconcile the two if they acknowl-
edge any pragmatic motives on the part of
their partners. This struggle is not unique to
farang men in Thailand, but it is surely

heightened by the ways their relative assets in
relationships increase upon migration, the
widespread discourse about scamming Thai
women, and their cultural differences with
Thai partners in how they frame appropriate
monetary transfers within intimate
relationships.
Shifts in power and immobility
Finally, migrants’ capacities to produce iden-
tities as ‘real white men’ in Thailand tended to
erode over time, particularly insofar as they
experienced shifts in power in relationships
with Thai women and lost a sense of control in
daily matters. White Westerners encountered
similar cultural and legal disadvantages that
migrants experience elsewhere; however, they
also faced obstacles to return home that
appear to be more unique to the North-to-
South migrant experience.
One basis for shifts in gender power in
relationships stemmed from state policies.
Although the Thai state continues to court
foreign capital, investment, and tourism, its
regulations on the entry, settlement, and
property rights of foreigners reflect the
cultural nationalism that positions the grow-
ing population of farang in Thailand as
quintessential Others and eternal outsiders.
The laws for entry are complex, but in general,
staying past a tourist entry on a non-
immigrant, one-year renewable visa rests on
maintaining a minimum monthly income or
sum in a Thai bank. For those under 50 not
eligible for a retirement visa, it also rests on
having a Thai spouse, a desired occupation,
investment capital, or a role in business.
Permanent residency and naturalization are
tightly restricted, such that it is difficult even
for foreigners with Thai spouses and children
to gain citizenship. This legal exclusion
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 441
compounded the effects of additional policies
that prohibited non-citizens from owning
houses or land, making it necessary for most
property purchased by a farang-Thai couple to
register it under a Thai citizen’s name (Cohen
2003; Howard 2009). These policies made
tenuous the legal residency of those with few
financial assets and necessitated the transfer of
property to Thai partners, shifting some
power within their relationships.
In addition, migrant men experienced a loss
of control in daily matters. Those who were
not fluent in Thai had to rely on their partners
for translating, for handling local matters such
as finances, legal issues, and even daily
errands. They depended on Thai partners to
guide them through the local Thai social scene,
and those with children tended to defer to their
partner’s judgments about the child’s (and
family’s) needs. Many of the men in our study
counteracted some of this dependency by
offering their Thai partners monthly stipends
rather than turning over all their income, as is
historically more common in Thai households.
Even with this gesture of financial control,
the above shifts in power complicated the
construction of a hegemonic masculinity in
relation to Thai partners, particularly insofar
as it rested on gender dominance. A working-
class bar manager in Isan positioned himself as
an old hand who understood the truth of the
farang situation, repeating the following story
in different forms:
A friend once said to me, “Simon, you’ve got to
remember the golden rule in Thailand,” and I said,
“what’s that?” And he said, “the man with the gold
rules.” Well certainly he does. Till he’s transferred
the bonds to the lady! Then he ain’t got no ruling
power. She’s got it all then. [ . . . ] Everything is in her
name. The car’s in her name, the house is in her
name. [ . . . ] So shit, if she says “we’re not going out
tonight,” we’re not fucking going out tonight! Well
442 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
you can go out, but don’t come home “cause you
don’t got one.”
While not every Western man in our study had
sought out a relationship where he could
exercise control over a partner, Simon equated
control in a marriage with being a ‘real man,’
and he concluded that ‘the men in Thailand
aren’t men anymore.’
Thai women exercised power in relation-
ships with farang men not only by holding
legal ownership of property and controlling
many daily matters, but also by leaving. Men
in farang communities repeated gossip about
who left whom, taking what resources, and
they experienced the prospect of such losses as
a genuine threat. Many of them had experi-
enced this scenario to some small degree, with
ex-girlfriends keeping some money, property,
or a car at the end of the relationship. Some of
the more extreme stories ended in catastrophe,
such as the case of Collin from the UK, whose
retirement savings had dwindled, partially
invested in a farm in Isan that he and his wife
purchased under her name. At the time they
separated, he had little more than $1000 in the
bank. Without enough money to qualify for a
non-immigrant visa, Collin could afford
neither to stay nor to start over somewhere
else. Farang migrants interpreted such stories
to validate their fears of financial loss, creating
a widespread sense of vulnerability that
undermined their initial feelings of masculine
status and control upon moving to Thailand.
These stories also reinforced the racialized
construction of Thai women as ‘scammers’
that obstructed their trust in their own
intimate relationships. As discussed earlier,
migrant men negotiated these vulnerabilities
in part by positioning themselves as risk-takers
and adventurers, a frame that permitted some
degree of masculine valor amidst emotional
and financial insecurity.
These insecurities tended to generate a sense
of ambivalence and disillusionment among
long-term migrants, who nonetheless did not
often pursue a return home, in large part
because the increased status they gained from
their migration would work in the reverse
upon their return. While some high-income
Western migrants living in Thailand have the
wherewithal for global mobility, few of those
in our sample fit that category. For men
without connections to global capital, the
move back was generally not financially
feasible: they would find it difficult to re-
enter the labor market after so much time
away, and the costs of living would be higher
at home, with even greater challenges during
this time of high unemployment and the
erosion of the welfare state. Although these
migrants initially experienced greater econ-
omic power upon their arrival in Thailand, the
advantages of Western currencies did not
sustain long-term economic or geographic
mobility. In addition, were they to return
home, the meanings of their race, class, and
gender would shift in ways that would make
less possible the construction of an identity as
a ‘real white man.’ In fact, they may instead
face stigma and the demasculinizing assump-
tion that they had gone to Thailand because
they were unable to attract Western women. In
this regard, they differ substantially from
migrant men from developing states who
return home with a more valorized masculine
position.
At the same time, many of our informants—
including those with a long-term partner,
children, and/or higher levels of social
integration—also faced practical obstacles
for a future in Thailand. Ben, aged 38, said
of himself and another American in his 30s:
‘Guys like us, we’re fucked. We’re at the age
where it’s too late to go home, but we’ll never
have a secure future here. There will be no

pension. Once you stop working, there is no
money.’ The terms on which he could stay also
troubled him, as he did not ‘want to be a
teacher in Thailand forever.’ Although he was
married to a Thai woman and had a child, he
did not make enough money on his teacher’s
salary to obtain a spousal visa, yet teaching
English was one of the only jobs for which he
could acquire a work visa. He felt trapped in a
job he did not like in order to legally stay in the
country.
Other studies of Western migrants living in
developing states in Asia have briefly men-
tioned similar patterns of erosion of privilege,
disillusionment, or relative immobility among
those with fewer financial resources (Cohen
1984; Farrer 2010; Lan 2011), suggesting that
these may be more general patterns among
North-to-South migrants without connections
to transnational capital. Combined with the
shifts in gender power, distrust in intimate
relationships, and more general social iso-
lation, they comprise significant constraints to
the long-term production of valorized mascu-
line identities in this context.
The complexities of white masculine
transformation in Thailand
This study illustrates how shifts in social
location among white Western men in
transnational relationships who had settled
in Thailand both enabled and constrained
performances of hegemonic masculinities over
time. On one hand, those settling with Thai
partners in Isan at least initially experienced
an increase in status grounded in the relatively
greater value of their financial resources and
their identity as white Westerners, both locally
valorized in Isan. They were able to leverage
this privilege as an asset in relationships with
younger Thai women in ways that permitted
White migrant masculinities in Thailand 443
them to constitute themselves as ‘successful’
men, drawing on ideals of hegemonic mascu-
linity from home. We argue that this masculine
position was also informed by a neocolonial
imaginary grounded in a sense of cultural and
racial superiority to Thai women and men.
These identities developed and were affirmed
within farang communities that bridged class
and national divisions through a common
identity as risk-taking adventurers and
through masculine-bonding practices such as
drinking and horseplay.
On the other hand, our ethnographic
approach also brought to light some of the
‘messy practices of power’ (Meth and McCly-
mont 2009: 922) and ways that settling in Isan
as a foreigner over time also introduced new
forms of marginalization and vulnerability
that constrained their performances of their
own masculine ideals. Some limits emerged
from the kinds of legal disadvantages and
cultural displacements that are common
among migrants. However, we also identify
ways in which the very bases of their privilege
paradoxically tended to have negative con-
sequences that eroded their sense of belonging,
mobility, and manhood. For instance, the same
cultural and racial essentialism that privileged
them made it difficult to establish social
relationships with Thais grounded in anything
but the generic expectations of a farang.
Forming intimate relationships with Thai
women grounded in part on their assets as
Westerners left them distrustful of their
partners’ genuine emotional commitment.
Perhaps most critically, the identities they
constituted as ‘real white men’ were place-
bound rather than mobile, on several scales.
On a transnational scale, the relative value of
their financial assets, the meaning of their
whiteness, their advantages in romantic pur-
suits, and any affirmation of their masculine
performances among other farang men would
444 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
all be lost upon a return home. These issues
were most pronounced for those with the least
financial resources. The masculine identities
they produced were also place-bound within
Thailand: farang migrants experienced more
privilege in tourist zones and throughout Isan
than among Thais in urban settings. Even
within Isan, there were spaces in which
migrants were more likely to have their
masculine performances affirmed and valor-
ized, such as in expatriate clubs and bars,
while they experienced some powerlessness
socially among Thais or at home.
Our findings illustrate both continuities and
differences with existing literatures on migrant
masculinities. We find continuities with studies
on men from developing states insofar as
Western migrants in Isan responded to social
marginalization and cultural barriers by
socially retreating into migrant communities.
They similarly drew upon fragments of
hegemonic masculinity from back home that
they had the capacity to perform in this new
context, as well as creating their own, local
masculine cultures. However, there were also
striking contrasts, insofar as Western migrant
communities defined themselves in neocolo-
nial terms as racial and cultural superiors and
experienced some privilege insofar as many of
those in Isan shared a similar neocolonial
imaginary. In this regard, Westerners’ capacity
to perform dominant masculinities—even as
this capacity became unstable and eroded over
time—was greater in Isan than it would be
upon a return home, in contrast to labor
migrants in the global North who may more
realistically fantasize about their valorization
as men back home.
Unsurprisingly, western migrants in Isan
had more in common with others making a
North-to-South trajectory, with some key
exceptions regarding the spaces and tempor-
ality of Western masculine privilege. For
instance, literatures on Western sex tourists
tend to attribute the privilege and power of
Western men largely to their structural
position in the global economy. In contrast,
this study illustrates how manifestations of
Western privilege can vary across social
spaces, depending upon the social relations
and hierarchies in particular local contexts as
well as the class position of the migrant. Even
within spaces in which Western migrants
initially experienced increased status and
privilege, this position was not stable over
time, but was subject to erosion and internal
contradiction. These findings suggest that
future scholarship should carefully attend to
both spatial and temporal dimensions in the
production of migrant masculinities.
Acknowledgements
This research was enabled by a grant from the
Faculty of Arts at the University of Mel-
bourne. We are grateful to Paul Green,
Andrew Dawson, Marc Askew, Ruth Oli-
phant, Dan Lim, Julienne Corboz, Susanna
Nied, and the anonymous reviewers for their
comments.
Notes
1. The terms ‘global North’ and ‘global South’ are
increasingly unsatisfactory and amidst financial crisis
in the West and rapid economic growth in places such as
Thailand; the North-South dualism does not capture
these complex and shifting loci of economic power..
However, international currency regimes still privilege
those using Euros, Dollars, and Yen, and in many
contexts, a historical imperial imaginary continues to
produce social hierarchies grounded in the intersection
of race, nationality, gender, and global position. For
these reasons, we believe it is still meaningful to refer to
a global North and South in a study of transnational
migration, even as our analysis shows these categories
to be unstable.

2. ‘Hegemonic masculinity’ refers to what Connell and
Messerschmidt call the ‘most honored way of being a
man’ in a particular social and cultural context (2005:
832). It reflects cultural ideals that may not represent
actual men’s lives so much as they are popular fantasies
and desires that men negotiate, subvert, go along with,
or reinforce (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Coles
2008).
3. Similar dynamics may be true for other regions of
Thailand away from the central urban centers, but this
study is primarily limited to Isan, so we are reluctant to
generalize.
4. Fechter and Walsh point out that the expatriate
moniker is technically correct, but that it tends to be
‘reserved for white Western migrants,’ which not only
marks them as fundamentally different but also
obscures some postcolonial baggage about race that
deserves to be interrogated (2010: 1199).
5. The term farang popularly refers to white Westerners.
According to Cook and Jackson (1999: 18), it is ‘a
ubiquitous Thai cultural-ethnic term which conflates
“Caucasian (race)” and “Western (culture).”’
6. Migrant sexualities were diverse in Bangkok and
Pattaya; however, gay men did not often move to
more rural provinces with their partners. In Isan,
Lafferty spoke with one black Londoner and an Arab-
American, but Thais did not treat them as farangs, but
instead as African or Arab, so their experiences differed
substantially. With so few potential informants, we
were not able to fully explore these dimensions of
identity here.
7. For instance, Brennan (2004) found romantic hopes
among women working in a Dominican sex tourism
district alongside fantasies of how a first-world passport
could open doors to a better life. In her study of
correspondence marriages between Western men and
Asian women, Constable also emphasizes the wide
diversity of motivations among both partners and how
such relationships are not reducible to economics or power
relations, even while they are shaped by them (2003).
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Abstract translations
Masculinités des immigrants blancs en Thaı̈lande
et paradoxes du privilège occidental
Cette étude examine la migration contre-paradig-
matique des Occidentaux en Thaı̈lande, en se
concentrant sur les hommes entretenant des
relations intimes transnationales dans la région du
nord-est. Nous explorons comment, au fil du temps,
les espaces particuliers dans lesquels ils se sont
installés ont affecté les capacités de ces immigrants
d’accomplir ce qu’ils considéraient comme des
masculinités hégémoniques. Nous trouvons qu’ini-
tialement, ils ont connu une élévation de leur statut
qu’ils ont pu convertir en atouts dans leurs relations
amoureuses, leur permettant de se poser comme
« gagneur de pain » et comme « un homme blanc,
un vrai », en puisant dans l’idéal masculin de leur
pays d’origine ainsi que dans un imaginaire
néocolonial diffus. Cependant, à la longue, ces
constructions identitaires ont été soumises à de
l’attrition et des contradictions intérieures. Ils
étaient aussi limités à un lieu, causant ainsi des
obstacles à la fois financiers et sociaux pour
retourner chez eux, surtout pour ceux qui n’avaient
pas accès à un capital transnational. La manière
dont ces modèles diffèrent de ceux d’études
actuelles souligne à quel point les espaces particu-
liers d’installation d’immigrants et les dimensions
temporelles sont tous deux essentiels à l’analyse des
masculinités des immigrants.
Mots-clefs: Masculinité, migration, expatrié, Thaı̈-
lande, le fait d’être blanc, relations transnationales.
Masculinidades migrantes blancas en Tailandia y
las paradojas de privilegio occidental
Este estudio examina la atı́pica migración de
personas del mundo occidental a Tailandia,
centrándose en hombres en relaciones ı́ntimas
transnacionales en la región noreste. Se explora
cómo los espacios particulares donde se estable-
cieron afectaron las capacidades de estos emi-
grantes para llevar a cabo lo que veı́an como
masculinidades hegemónicas a medida que
pasaba el tiempo. Se encontró que inicialmente
experimentaron un aumento de estado social, el
cual fueron capaces de convertir en un recurso
útil en relaciones amorosas, permitiéndoles
448 Kristen Hill Maher & Megan Lafferty
posicionarse como ‘proveedores’ y ‘hombres
blancos verdaderos’, sobre la base de ideales
masculinos de sus paı́ses de origen, ası́ como
también de un disperso imaginario neocolonial. A
la larga, sin embargo, estas construcciones de
identidad fueron objeto de contradicciones inter-
nas y de profundo desgaste. Estuvieron también
ligadas al lugar, creando obstáculos tanto
financieros como sociales a la hora de regresar
al hogar, sobre todo para aquellos sin vı́nculos
con el capital transnacional. Las formas en que
estos ejemplos difieren con estudios existentes
ponen de manifiesto la importancia de los
espacios particulares de asentamiento de emi-
grantes y de las dimensiones temporales para el
análisis de las masculinidades de los mismos.
Palabras claves: masculinidad, migración, expatria-
dos, Tailandia, blancura, relaciones transnacio-
nales.
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