Sex, State, and the Making of the Chinese Protectorate in the Age of Modern Migration Control, 1877–1939

Between the 1870s and 1930s, the mechanisms of modern migration control first emerged as a system of racial and gender exclusion, circumscribing the mobility of Asian migrants into white settler nations and colonies. In British Malaya, however, migrant Chinese women experienced a different mode of immigration surveillance and regulation. As an exploitation colony heavily dependent on both the labor power and capital of migrants, the intimate work women performed were regarded by colonial administrators as indispensable for the prosperity and social stability of the Peninsula. This paper explores the historical connections between colonial sexual economy, modern migration governance, and an emergent global border regime. It argues that colonial migration governance developed as a gendered project aimed both at encouraging and policing Chinese women’s sexuality, intimate relations, and livelihood strategies. Drawing on Chinese Protectorate and labor documents, police reports, and legal records, this paper demonstrates how nascent immigration policies and border-control practices in colonial Malaya were ultimately shaped by broader anxieties regarding “yellow traffic” and Chinese women’s labor mobility in the region.