Abstract

As globalization and transnational encounters intensify, people’s mobility is increasingly conditioned by intimacy, ranging from love, desire, and sexual liaisons to broader family, kinship, and conjugal matters. This book explores the entanglement of mobility and intimacy in various configurations throughout the world. It argues that rather than being distinct and unrelated phenomena, intimacy-related mobilities constitute variations of cross-border movements shaped by and deeply entwined with issues of gender, kinship, race, and sexuality, as well as local and global powers and border restrictions in a disparate world.

“Written by an international cluster of leading scholars, this volume combines the work of academics who have engaged in sustained, multi-sited, transnational ethnography with that of newer scholars rethinking the field of marriage, migration state policy, and locality. The scholarship of this volume challenges and transforms the field of migration studies by teaching us how to theorize migration and state immigration policies through the lens of intimate relations.” • Amalia L. Cabezas, University of California, Riverside

“This is a solid, worthwhile scholarly contribution that moves our knowledge of migration and intimate relationships further along.” • Gilbert Herdt, San Francisco State University

Nadine T. Fernandez is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Social Science Department at the State University of New York, Empire State College. She has written Revolutionizing Romance: Interracial Couples in Contemporary Cuba (2010), as well as several book chapters.  Her articles appear in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Identities, Latin American Perspectives, and Temas. In 2015, she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

Christian Groes is an Associate Professor at Roskilde University. His books include Affective Circuits: African Migration to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration (2016, co-ed. Jennifer Cole) and Studying Intimate Matters: Engaging Methodological Challenges in Studies on Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011, co-ed. Barbara Ann Barrett). In 2012, he received the Young Elite Researcher prize from the Danish Council for Independent Research.