Sexuality, Citizenship and Belonging

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.

"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,

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.