Cover Page

For Jane

Sexuality and Citizenship

Diane Richardson











polity

Acknowledgements

This book represents a process of research and thinking and writing about sexuality and citizenship over many years. My first thanks are to the Leverhulme Trust for granting me a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. Writing, like friendship, needs the commitment of time and thoughtfulness. The Fellowship, entitled Transforming Citizenship: Sexuality, Gender and Citizenship Struggles, provided me with the space from September 2013 to January 2016 to carry out a good deal of the research that informs this book. It gave me both the time and the freedom to think. Without the support of the Major Research Fellowship this would be a very different book and one, I imagine, with a rather different publication date.

I want to thank those involved in the process of making this book. Thanks to my publishing editor Jonathan Skerrett and the production team at Polity, in what was a new publishing relationship, for their very efficient and helpful handling of the editorial and production process. My appreciation also to the anonymous readers for their useful feedback. Some of the ideas in the book were provoked by my engagement with two previous research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and I would like to thank my colleagues who worked with me on these. Thanks go to Surya Monro and Ann McNulty on the Sexuality, Equality and Local Governance project, and to Nina Laurie, Meena Poudel and Janet Townsend on the Post Trafficking in Nepal: Sexuality and Citizenship in Livelihood Strategies project. I also owe thanks to Shakti Samuha, our research partner in the Nepal project, one of the first anti-trafficking organizations globally to be founded and run by women who have left trafficking situations, and to all of those who took part in both of the studies. I would also like to acknowledge permission granted under open access licence agreement to reproduce some sections from the article ‘Rethinking Sexual Citizenship’ published in Sociology (2015), 51(2): 208–24.

A good deal of the writing was carried out while I was a Visiting Scholar in the US during the academic year of 2014 to 2015. In the first half of the year, I was based at the Centre for the Study of Women (CSW) and the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). I would like to thank staff there for hosting me, in particular Pamela Crespin and other staff in CSW and Gail Kligman and Abigail Saguy in the Department of Sociology, for their support in enabling my visit to UCLA. I also want to thank Evy Blumenberg, Brian Taylor, Jan Lawrence and Russ Worden for their friendship and hospitality. In the second half of the year (wrong way round weather-wise) I was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Gender & Sexuality Law (CGSL) at Columbia University in New York. I would also like to offer my gratitude to staff there for hosting me, in particular to the Directors of the Centre, Suzanne Goldberg and Katherine Franke, and to Cindy Gao for her administrative support.

This book has taken me away from family and friends, both literally in some cases and metaphorically in others, and I want to express my gratitude and love to them for continuing to be a source of support in a myriad of ways that contributes to what I can accomplish and who I am and have become. I thank especially Cynthia Chicken-Usher, Jackie Davis, Megan Foster, Loren Fox, Chris Hagar, Nina Laurie, Hazel May, Lillian May Fox, Sue Mitchell, Jane Pollard, Vicki Robinson and Rachel Woodward.

Abbreviations

CEDAW
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
ESRC
Economic and Social Research Council
GAATW
Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women
HRC
Human Rights Campaign
IDAHOT
International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia
ILGA
International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association
INGO
international non-governmental organization
IOM
International Organization for Migration
IRRRAG
International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group
LGB
lesbian, gay and bisexual
LGBT
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
LGBTI
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex
LGBTQ
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer
LGBTQQI
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and intersex
NGO
non-governmental organization
SOGI
sexual orientation and gender identity
UNHRC
United Nations Human Rights Council
UNAIDS
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
VDCs
Village Development Committees