Book launch: 'Cross-Border Intimacies'
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Main Building
- Room
- RB01
- Event type
- Launch
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Lara Momesso for the book launch of Cross-Border Intimacies: Affect and Emotions in Marriage Migration Between China and Taiwan, exploring how marriage migration across the Taiwan Strait is shaped by everyday emotional life and the politics of sovereignty.
Since the early 1990s, economic exchanges between China and Taiwan have paved the way to migration across a previously closed border and to social and cultural interactions between the two populations. Despite these broader changes, the unresolved issue of Taiwan sovereignty has tainted not only the relations between the two governments but also the everyday life of those who move across the Taiwan Strait.
In this book launch, Lara will explore how, in this highly politicised environment, the intimate and affective lives of mainland Chinese migrants both shape and are shaped by the emotional dynamics of social and political life in Taiwan and with the broader national interests at stake.
Image credit: ChingYing Liu via Unsplash
About the speaker
Lara Momesso is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Area and Migration Studies at the University of Lancashire and a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS. Her research spans migration studies and socio-cultural anthropology, focusing on migrant identity, intimacy, integration, and political participation. Her 2025 monograph with Manchester University Press draws on two decades of ethnographic research with mainland Chinese marriage migrants in Taiwan. Lara also hosts several podcasts aimed at fostering a more nuanced understanding of migration issues and Taiwan.
