Transnational Geographies of The Heart (eBook)

Katie Walsh is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Sussex, UK. Her research focuses on home, intimacy and British migration. Katie's current work explores ageing, migration and home through the life-stories of British return migrants in later life. She is the co-editor of Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age (2016) and The New Expatriates: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals (2012).

Series Editor's Preface vi

Acknowledgements vii

1 Introduction 1

2 Geographies of Intimacy 23

3 A Globalising Gulf Region and the British in Dubai 45

4 British 'Expatriate' Subjectivities in Dubai 65

5 'Community', Clubs and Friendship 85

6 Sex, Desire and Romance in the Globalising City 106

7 Migration, Domesticity and 'Family Life' 126

8 Our Intimate Lives 145

References 155

Index 172

'A lively, thought-provoking examination of intimate and transnational subjectivities. Drawing on careful ethnographic research, a rich picture is developed of the complexities of intimacy for British expatriates in Dubai. The analysis is insightful, and the volume makes a significant and distinctive contribution to our understanding of migration and transnational life.'
David Conradson, Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

'Intimacy is so thickly woven into our individual and social lives that it is extremely difficult to pick apart conceptually, particularly in the hyper-mobile and globalised settings of contemporary life. Transnational Geographies of the Heart directly addresses this challenge by exploring the intimacy concept in relationship to mobility. In this absorbing and erudite book, Walsh develops a much needed language with which to explore the textures of intimacy - deeply under acknowledged in the migrant literature - as they are enacted and negotiated in one of today's least studied but most globalised cities. In doing so, Walsh delivers a ground-breaking work that highlights the significance of geographical analysis in understanding the spatialisation of intimate subjectivities and the importance of place - defined through multiple sites of belonging within complex postcolonial and racialised contexts - in shaping our inter-personal relationships.'
Loretta Baldassar, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia

'A lively, thought-provoking examination of intimate and transnational subjectivities. Drawing on careful ethnographic research, a rich picture is developed of the complexities of intimacy for British expatriates in Dubai. The analysis is insightful, and the volume makes a significant and distinctive contribution to our understanding of migration and transnational life.'
David Conradson, Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

'Intimacy is so thickly woven into our individual and social lives that it is extremely difficult to pick apart conceptually, particularly in the hyper-mobile and globalised settings of contemporary life. Transnational Geographies of the Heart directly addresses this challenge by exploring the intimacy concept in relationship to mobility. In this absorbing and erudite book, Walsh develops a much needed language with which to explore the textures of intimacy - deeply under acknowledged in the migrant literature - as they are enacted and negotiated in one of today's least studied but most globalised cities. In doing so, Walsh delivers a ground-breaking work that highlights the significance of geographical analysis in understanding the spatialisation of intimate subjectivities and the importance of place - defined through multiple sites of belonging within complex postcolonial and racialised contexts - in shaping our inter-personal relationships.'
Loretta Baldassar, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia