Everynight Politics and Expatriate Gay Men: Forging Community in Buenos Aires, Flirting with Non-Existence in Dubai

• In Event: 50465 - Sexualities and the Sociology of Nightlife

Abstract

How does politics become a part of quotidian nightlife – a kind of “everynight politics” – among gay male migrants in different forms across the urban Global South? Strategically comparing Buenos Aires (widely praised for LGBT+ inclusion) and Dubai (scoring poorly on all indices of LGBT+ status), the article shows how different historical-political settings specifically related to nightlife regulation, broader rights struggles, and queer visibility contribute to distinct situations and senses of nightlife-as-community in these two cities. Drawing on notions of everyday politics and habitus – from the work of Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu – and models of cross-urban comparison this manuscript delineates how nightlife, sexuality, and foreignness are distinctly politicized within these highly transnationalized cities. Drawing on 6 months of ethnography in each city, including interviews and co-participation in social life with scores of gay expatriates from dozens of countries, plus extensive archival consultation, this manuscript compares these starkly contrasting yet simultaneously related contexts of celebration. In Argentina, LGBT+ struggles and achievements create both a draw for transnational gay people and a thrust for maintaining rights, when under political fire. In the UAE, where homosexuality is strictly forbidden and can face harsh punishment, there is no history of open struggle for LGBT+ rights, nor legal allowance for advocating such rights. Yet gay migrants flock to Dubai for work opportunities. There, gay nightlife is hidden and siloed, entailing almost exclusively among other gay men. In Buenos Aires, the context of simultaneous struggle and openness, combined with an influx of foreigners choosing “safer” LGBT+ destinations, leads to a more intersectionally inclusive queer community of friendships transversally across the queer spectrum.

Author

• Ryan Centner, London School of Economics