Thursday, March 29, 2018
Toledo Room (InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile)
In what ways does interracial desire inform (im)migration decisions? A 2009 special issue of the journal Mobilities proclaimed a “‘sexual turn’ in migration studies” (Mai and King 2009: 296). “We feel it needs to be recognised,” editors Mai and King write, “that […] migrants and other ‘people on the move’ are sexual beings expressing, wanting to express, or denied the means to express, their sexual identities.” At that time, and since, social scientists from diverse disciplines have explored sexual attraction as a force generative of a range of identities, practices, and epistemologies in the befores, whilsts, and afters of international migration. Surprisingly, close to none of that work has analyzed this intersection through the conceptual apparatus of cosmopolitanism. This paper offers such a discussion, drawing on a 10-year ethnography conducted online and face-to-face in the United Kingdom, Poland, and the U.S.A., of a cohort (n=100+) of male, gay-identified, Polish migrants to the United Kingdom post-2004 (when Poland joined the European Union), who seek amorous and/or sexual intimacy with men of color, primarily men of African descent, on same-sex dating websites and mobile apps. Arising from this empirical material, I have proposed the concept of libidinal cosmopolitanism in Ponzanesi and Colpani 2016, and my book The Amorous Migrant: Race, Relationships and Resettlement, forthcoming from Temple University Press. This work locates cosmopolitanism at the nexus of studies of migration, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and digital media.
