How Wee Ng and Siao Yuong Fong 2026. The ‘rise of China’ and the Sinosphere’s evolving ‘constitutive outside’: mapping the mainland Chinese migrant woman in Singapore cinema. Transnational Screens. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2026.2721198
| Title | The ‘rise of China’ and the Sinosphere’s evolving ‘constitutive outside’: mapping the mainland Chinese migrant woman in Singapore cinema |
|---|---|
| Type | Journal article |
| Authors | How Wee Ng and Siao Yuong Fong |
| Abstract | This article maps representations of mainland Chinese migrant women in Singapore cinema from 1997 to 2025 to examine how the rise of China and the evolving Sinosphere have reshaped Singaporean identity, film practice, and regimes of representation. Drawing on ten feature films and their paratexts, we argue that the mainland Chinese migrant woman functions as a constitutive outside whose portrayals have shifted from caricatured outsider to sympathetic subject and, more recently, market-ready inclusion. Through a three-part periodisation, we trace continuities and ruptures in the negotiation of co-ethnic othering, realist empathy, and transnational incorporation. The first group comprises locally funded films that position PRC women as antagonistic outsiders, often characterised through stereotypes that are reproduced through co-ethnic yellowface and self-yellowface. The second group adopts a more observational realist mode, granting migrant women greater visibility while frequently mobilising them as vehicles for broader social critique. The third group foregrounds incorporation, where sympathetic representation and inclusivity respond to transnational market pressures and China’s soft-power agendas while rearticulating difference in new political-economic and aesthetic forms. By situating these shifts within changing industrial conditions, this study provides the first systematic account of mainland Chinese migrant women in Singapore feature films and a critical lens on the gendered geopolitics of migration. |
| Journal | Transnational Screens |
| ISSN | 2578-5273 |
| 2578-5265 | |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
| Publisher's version | License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2026.2721198 |
| Web address (URL) | https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2026.2721198 |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 22 Aug 2026 |