The inconvenience of "other others": Gay expats as queer migrants

Abstract

While a significant body of work has developed around the intersection of sexuality and migration, a particular subset of people marked by both of those categories has received scant academic attention: gay expatriates. This paper addresses relatively privileged homosexual men who lead transnational lives, mostly based outside their countries of origin, drawing from a comparative ethnography of this population residing in London, Dubai, and Buenos Aires. The focus is on their status as a kind of queer migrant, and their relations with both other queers (mostly not migrants) and other migrants (mostly not queer), where quests to create homes away from home sometimes lead to discomforting, inconvenient interactions with — or avoidance of — these fellow queers and fellow migrants. Using ethnographic portraits from each city to depict the variety of social, economic, and legal contexts in which these gay expats carry out their lives, I delineate how tensions with “other others” shape senses of place for these men and those who regularly interact with them locally. Specific emphasis is also given to considering examples and possibilities of greater solidarity among these socially adjacent groups, and the spatial inputs that can nourish these more felicitous outcomes.