Sexing Diaspora : Negotiating Sexuality in Shifting Cultural Landscape

• This paper is about diaspora. Through an analysis of the narratives of first-generation Iranian women living in Sweden and by placing gender and sexuality at the centre of my attention, I examine women’s experiences of migration and (un)settlement. In sum, I seek to demonstrate how migratory experiences impact sexuality and how and in what ways sexuality is constitutive to migratory process. Based on the narration of their diasporic experiences by these women, I aim to understand to what extent, and in what forms, migration and displacement (re)constitute the women’s notions of their sexuality(ies). The interviews are the textual field for exploring the divergent and contingent intersections of the discourses that constitute the women’s shifting notions of sexuality, in what ways they preserve values they believe important and the ambiva­lence the women convey about their sexuality and ethnicized/racialized and gendered roles in the diasporic context. By discussing some of the key subjects raised by the interviewees, such as intimacy in the diasporic space, contradictory gender discourses, the dominating impacts of existing Orientalist stereotypes, and their sense of (be)longing or not (be)longing, I will examine how the women experience their sexuality through the simultaneous and sometimes contradictory discourses of dislocation, attachment, and relations in the diasporic space.

Keyword

Diaspora

Sexuality

Gender

Orientalism

Ethnology

etnologi

Sociology

sociologi

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)