1st Edition

Sexuality, Citizenship and Belonging Trans-National and Intersectional Perspectives

    262 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    262 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book brings together a diverse range of critical interventions in sexuality and gender studies, and seeks to encourage new ways of thinking about the connections and tensions between sexual politics, citizenship and belonging. The book is organized around three interlinked thematic areas, focusing on sexual citizenship, nationalism and international borders (Part 1); sexuality and "race" (Part 2); and sexuality and religion (Part 3). In revisiting notions of sexual citizenship and belonging, contributors engage with topical debates about "sexual nationalism," or the construction of western/European nations as exceptional in terms of attitudes to sexual and gender equality vis-à-vis an uncivilized, racialized "Other."

    The collection explores macro-level perspectives by attending to the geopolitical and socio-legal structures within which competing claims to citizenship and belonging are played out; at the same time, micro-level perspectives are utilized to explore the interplay between sexuality and "race," nation, ethnicity and religious identities. Geographically, the collection has a prevalently European focus, yet contributions explore a range of trans-national spatial dimensions that exceed the boundaries of "Europe" and of European nation-states.

    Introduction  Francesca Stella, Yvette Taylor, Tracey Reynolds and Antoine Rogers  Part 1: Sexual Nationalisms and the Boundaries of Sexual Citizenship  1. Sexual Citizenship, Nationalism and Biopolitics in Putin’s Russia  Francesca Stella and Nadya Nartova  2. Sexuality, Citizenship and Migration: The Irish Queer Diaspora in London  Roísín Ryan-Flood  3. Narrativizing One’s Sexuality/Gender: Neoliberal Humanitarianism and the Right of Asylum  Calogero Giametta  4. The New Transnational Politics of LGBT Human Rights in the Commonwealth: What Can UK NGOs Learn from the Global South?  Matthew Waites  Part 2: Racialised Subjects and Feminist/Queer Solidarities  5. Black Mammy and Company: Exploring Constructions of Black Womanhood in Britain  Tracey Reynolds  6. Activism Beyond Identities: Building Shared Alliances Against Homophobia and Racism in Palermo  Maria Livia Alga  7. What Does a “Genuine Lesbian” Look Like?: Intersections of Sexuality and “Race” in Manchester’s Gay Village and in the UK Asylum System  Nina Held  8. “Time After Time”: Gay Conditionality, Colonial Temporality, and Āzādī  Tara Atluri  Part 3: Sexuality, Religion and Belonging  9. Creating Citizens, Constructing Religion, Configuring Gender: Intersectional Sites, Scripts and Sticking Points  Yvette Taylor and Ria Snowdon  10. Changing Churches: Sexuality, Difference, Power  Savitri Hensman  11. Counter-Normative Identities: Religious Young Adults Subverting Sexual Norms  Sarah-Jane Page  12. Angels and the Dragon King’s Daughter: Gender and Sexuality in Western Buddhist New Religious Movements  Sally R. Munt and Sharon E. Smith

    Biography

    Francesca Stella is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow.

    Yvette Taylor is Professor of Education at the University of Strathclyde.

    Tracey Reynolds is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Greenwich.

    Antoine Rogers is a Principal Lecturer in Sociology at London South Bank University.

    "This collection offers a wide range of critical and in-depth interventions in sexuality and gender studies. Its call for creative and new ways of imagining the interplay between sexual politics, citizenship and belonging is urgent and timely. Addressing diverse topics on sexual citizenship, nationalism, international borders, "race,' religion, 'sexual nationalism,' 'sexual exceptionalism,' and the 'Other,' this collection compels us to challenge current understandings of sexual citizenship and transnational belonging, and re-imagine new possibilities and connections. Offering theoretically-sophisticated and empirically-insightful macro and micro-level analyses, this book is a must-read for scholars who seek to reflect critically on these urgent and contentious geopolitical, policy, and academic issues, and develop competent interventions that affirm diversity, and promote social justice and equality."

    -- Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham


    "For those interested in the border and border control, the several chapters in the collection stand out. Among other authors, readers will find Calogero Giametta’s examination of asylum procedures for LGBT claimants that focuses on production and presentation of ‘genuine’ biographies of victims to be of great interest. Another example is Maria Livia Alga’s chapter which centres on a conservative Italy to explore the ‘shared marginality’ of migrants and the LGBT community. These, among other chapters, help to shine a light on sexuality’s interplay with fortress Europe’s identity politics, which is often understudied in research and writing on border control."
    - Brandy Cochrane, Monash University,