1st Edition
Gender, Sexuality and National Identity in the Lives of British Lifestyle Migrants in Spain Chasing the Rainbow
This book takes an intimate look at the lives of British migrants in Sitges, an affluent coastal tourist town in Northern Spain and investigates ideas of gender, sexuality, and national identity as they are brought to life through the voices of British lifestyle migrants.
Situating Sitges as a specifically affluent and "middle-class" location representing a particular form of "lifestyle migration," this rich and detailed study explores how the experiences of British migrants re-inscribe culturally specific understandings of the relationship between space, place, culture and identity. What ultimately emerges is an account of the complex structural constraints of identity, as British migrants find themselves stuck within the stereotype of badly-behaved Brits Abroad and entangled in highly conservative conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, that leave them unable to live the kind of cosmopolitan lifestyles that they so purposefully sought.
This is a fascinating study suitable for researchers in gender and sexuality studies, tourism, sociology, and anthropology.
Introduction
Chapter One Setting the Scene - Sitges and Cosmopolitanism
Chapter Two A history of tourism in Britain and Spain
Chapter Three Living Between Expectation and Reality
Chapter Four Sitges and Lifestyle Migration
Chapter Five Authenticity and Identity - becoming who you are in Sitges
Chapter Six Escaping from Ties that Bind and Other Contradictions
Chapter Seven Political Theories of Recognition
Chapter Eight The Revaluation of Homosexuality and the Cross-Gendered Paradigm
Chapter Nine The Heterosexual Matrix
Chapter Ten Women, Lesbians, and Authenticity – an extended interview
Chapter Eleven ‘Heterolesbianism’ and Pornography
Chapter Twelve Sitges Pride; a Case Study
Chapter Thirteen Heterolesbianism as Hypersexualisation
Conclusion
Biography
Laura Dixon is a social anthropologist and the programme leader of Events Management at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Her research to date focuses on recognition, cosmopolitanism, gender, and sexuality amongst privileged British "lifestyle migrants" in the tourist town of Sitges, in Spain. She is currently working on exploring ideas of temporality and spatialisation in relation to Britons who have recently returned from Spain to the UK.
