The papers in this special issue constitute a powerful argument for both a 'sexual turn' and an 'emotional turn' in migration and mobility studies.
They show how issues of sexuality, intimacy and emotion articulate with various forms of mobility and immobility. In some cases, emotional and sexual motivations for migration involve economic costs; in others sexuality and love are sacrificed at the altar of the economic imperatives of migration; in yet others, trading sex can be a vehicle for migration and economic betterment.
The papers draw on detailed and impressive empirical research amongst a variety of migrant and potentially mobile, as well as immobile, groups in countries in both rich and poor parts of the world. Some draw on queer theory to challenge heteronormative and homonormative categories in favour of drawing out the polymorphous and performative dimensions of 'mobile' sexualities. On a broader front, the papers help to contextualise migrants' life trajectories within the ambivalent interplay between mobility, sedentarism, modernity and capitalism.
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