XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

563

Mobile Desires: The Patterns, Structures and Strategies of Sexual Migration

RC31 Sociology of Migration (host committee)

Language: English

This session foregrounds sexual migration, defined as geographical relocation that is linked directly or indirectly to the sexuality and sexual desires of those who migrate. Sexual migration has become an emerging field in diverse areas of studies, including the sexuality scholarship, the migration scholarship, and the queer migration scholarship. The session examines three issues: 1) how population mobility has shaped the ‘construction, regulation and reworking of sexual identities’ ; 2) how sexuality has implicated different forms of international and internal migration, ranging from immigration, emigration, transnationalism, diaspora , refugees, to asylum seekers; and 3) the intersection between migration, sexuality and structures of power such as class, gender, racial, and ethnic regimes, state policies and legislations, transnational capitalism, neo-imperialism, and post-colonialism .  It is hope that papers in the session would challenge the dominant focus of existing migration research on economic and family migrants and the neglect of emotional and sexual factors in structuring migration decisions and settlement processes.  Furthermore, the session also unsettles the heteronormative assumptions within existing migration studies and opens new avenues for interrogating the intersection between sexuality and different regimes of power in structuring population and idea movements across borders and locations.  In sum, the session opens up new frontiers for an ‘emotional turn’ and a ‘sexual turn’ in migration research. Since the few studies in this area have focused on immigrants in the US, scholars working in non-Western contexts are particularly welcome to submit to the session and contribute to the existing academic dialogue.