Digital intimacy and transient desire: Chinese international students’ motivations and experiences of using mobile dating applications in the UK

This paper examines how transient migration (re)shapes the intimate desires of Chinese international students in the UK over time, with particular attention to their engagements with mobile dating applications (MDAs). Drawing on the sexual field framework, this study investigates the changing motivations behind UK-based Chinese international students’ use of MDAs. Based on two rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted with 40 heterosexual students between January 2022 and March 2023, the findings suggest that most participants’ desires became increasingly ambiguous and ambivalent. Ambiguous motivations were shaped both by the expectation of exploring diverse dating possibilities in the UK and by the disappointment and exhaustion that arose from navigating ‘failed’ intimate relationships. Ambiguous desires were often underpinned by ambivalence, illustrating participants’ deep desire for long-term relationships coupled with an intentional detachment from them. I argue that transient migration status exposed these participants to disjunctures in structures of desires, shaping what I term their transient desires and contributing to a double fragility in their intimate lives. This research offers a novel and dynamic account of how cultural norms, dating technologies and transnational mobility are interwoven to influence the intimate practices and desires of transient migrants.