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3 - Gender, Migration, and Sexuality in the Modern World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Kalpana Hiralal
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

This chapter highlights issues around sexuality and migration. It examines more closely one particular type of migration, with a comparative analysis of migrations from southern Italy, China, and western India to the Americas, Africa, and South Asia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the women who were left behind by this migration. Traditional research on historical migrations has provided male-centred perspectives regarding motives, settlement, identity, and citizenship. Recent studies have sought to alter these perspectives by shifting women”s narratives from the margins to the centre in the context of agency, sexuality, and masculinity. Thus this chapter problematizes the sexual economy not only of the “women left behind” in the migration process but also that of their spouses and partners. It reveals how gender shapes migration and how migration defines gender relations. It alludes to attitudes and perceptions about gender and sexuality in a diverse geopolitical context, how the intersectionality of sex and emotions frames mobility behaviour and challenges sexual norms. It thus shifts the nexus between gender, sexuality, and migration to the centre of historical analysis rather than situating it at the margins.

Keywords

migrationagencysexualitygenderAsiaAfricaimmigrationemigration
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 50 - 70
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

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