Female Cosmopolitanism? Media Talk and Identity of Transnational Asian Women

Abstract

Based on empirical research on transnational Asian women in London, this study interrogates the notion of cosmopolitanism and challenges the general assumptions of cosmopolitan identity formation as intersected with the media. Are they becoming cosmopolitan subjects? Can they afford a cosmopolitan identity? It argues that the possibility of becoming cosmopolitan subjects is contingent upon discursive encounters with Others and relational experience; no cosmopolitan yearning, or, a situated but characteristically thin cosmopolitanism, arises from the experience of the actual conditions of transnational lives, unequal relations of power, and discourses of exclusion and inclusion. Rather, a more cosmopolitan sense of style, eager exploration of global Others, and heightened motivations emerged through the increasing experience of the media imaginary among women while inhabiting in their homeland, embracing the world at a reflexive distance.

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