The Feeling of Migration: Narratives of Queer Intimacies and Partner Migration

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnographic interview study analyzing narratives of queer partner migration, i.e., a family-tie migration in which one partner of a relationship has migrated in order for the partners to be together, and where the partners queer the migration in the sense that they have a non-normative sexuality and/or gender identity. The purpose is to examine how queer partner migrants and their non-migrating Swedish partners experience the migration process by analyzing what emotions and feelings ‘do’ to the relationship and how emotions and feelings structure the migration process. The study analyzes the work three different emotions – love, loss, and belonging – carry out in these migration processes, and how this work is described in participant narratives. Migrant participants have migrated from different parts of the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America), making it possible to analyze what emotions and feelings do in this particular migration process from the point of view of nationality and, in particular, proximity to ‘Western-ness,’ race, and language as well as how privileges connected to these positions come to matter in the process.

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Publications

Ahlstedt, Sara (2015) "Doing 'feelwork': Reflections on whiteness and methodological challenges in research on queer partner migration" in Rikke Andreassen & Kathrine Vitus (eds) Affectivity and Race: Studies from Nordic Contexts. Farnham: Ashgate

Ahlstedt, Sara (2016) The Feeling of Migration: Narratives of Queer Intimacies and Partner Migration. Linköping University Electronic Press: Linköping