ICS Seminar Series - Professor Greg Noble

Date: Thursday 8 May, 2014
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EB.2.04, UWS Parramatta South campus

Professor Greg Noble

Do Migrants Have Sex? Migration, Masculinity and Sexual Emplacement

Abstract

In reading much scholarship on migration, you might think that the success of migrants in fulfilling the functions of social reproduction – central to immigration policy – was accomplished without recourse to sexual activity. Older research on gender and migration has tended to focus on women’s experience of subordination, domestic violence and the sex industry. Recent work around the ‘sexual turn’ in migration studies reminds us that migrants aren’t just an economic resource or a social problem, but humans with sexual energies (Mai and King, 2009), but the emphasis in this research has been on the experiences of gay migrants and sex trafficking. Ironically there has been an under-exploration of sexuality in relation to heterosexual men’s lives. Emerging from research into Lebanese-Australians’ experiences of settlement, this paper focuses on a case study of a man whose sexual history represents practices of emplacement. It examines what happens to his sexual subjectivity through his engagement with a different kind of modernity and masculinity. It argues that sexuality can be a mediating and pedagogical practice in the negotiation and accomplishment of refashioning a home.

Biography

Greg Noble is Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, UWS. He has been involved in research in multiculturalism for over 25 years, with a special interest in the relations between youth and ethnicity; everyday racism and conviviality; material culture and embodiment; and multicultural education … but is a little surprised to find himself writing about migrants and sex. He is the co-author or editor of several books, the most recent being Disposed to Learn (Bloomsbury, 2013) and On Being Lebanese in Australia (Lebanese American University Press, 2010).

Events

Research at ICS

People at ICS

Contact ICS

Contact ICS

The Institute for Culture and Society is located in Parramatta, “the place where the eel sets down” in Dharug language,
along the north bank of the Parramatta River. It sits on the traditional lands and waters of the Burramattagal people of the Dharug Nation,
who have been stewards and caretakers of these territories since time immemorial, in what today is referred to as Greater Western Sydney,
one of the most diverse cultural communities in the world and home to the largest number of Indigenous Australians in the country.
The Institute for Culture and Society acknowledges the Dharug, Eora, Dharawal (also referred to as Tharawal)
and Wiradjuri peoples as traditional custodians and Indigenous knowledge-holders, whose storytelling serve
as historical record, a form of teaching and learning, a way to care for Country,
and an expression of Indigenous culture and identity.