The focus of this paper is the impact of the 'new urban order' on sexualised spaces in cities. The paper explores how sexual 'others' are conscripted into the process of urban transformation and, by turn, how city branding has become part of the sexual citizenship agenda. The interweaving of urban governance and sexual citizenship agendas produces particular kinds of sexual spaces, at the exclusion of other kinds. The paper considers the extent to which the idea of sexual citizenship has been woven into the tournament of urban entrepreneurialism and how this affects sexualised spaces. This process is read as an instance of 'the new homonormativity', producing a global repertoire of themed gay villages, as cities throughout the world weave commodified gay space into their promotional campaigns.

According to i ek (1997) the logic of late capitalism offers opportunities for the incorporation of previously marginalised groups, whilst simultaneously dividing them at the same time. These possibilities for incorporation create divisions on the basis of gender, race, sexuality and class. Here, we examine how the capitalist desire for opening new markets for leisure consumption with new forms of branding, alongside the desire for the territorialisation of space by campaigning gay and lesbian groups, has led to the formation of a 'gay space' marketed as a cosmopolitan spectacle, in which the central issue becomes a matter of access and knowledge: who can use, consume and be consumed in gay space? We also ask what is the radical political impetus of sexual politics when commodified as cosmopolitan and incorporated spatially? The paper grounds the examination of the politics of cosmopolitanism within a specific locality drawing upon research undertaken on the contested use of space within Manchester's gay village. The paper is organised into four sections. The first examines competing definitions of cosmopolitanism, exploring how sexuality and class are framed as conceptual limits. The second describes how Manchester's gay village is imagined and branded as cosmopolitan. The third considers the navigation and negotiation of difference within this space. The final section evaluates the exclusions from cosmopolitan space and pursues the significance of this for arguments about incorporation in late capitalism.

The globalization of sexuality refers to the sexualized and embodied nature of processes associated with the movement of people, capital, and goods across national boundaries. It also refers to how the consciousness of the world as a single place is sexualized. The globalization of sexuality is manifest in a range of processes and phenomena that are often couched and approached in highly emotive terms (e.g., the trafficking of women into prostitution, mail‐order brides, the development of the sex industry and sex tourism). It is also characterized by the AIDS pandemic, mass international tourism, and the development of cyberspace. Each of these has in turn intensified consciousness of the status of sexual minorities and the unevenness of their treatment across the globe. Key to our understandings of the globalization of sexuality is the relationship between sexuality and economics. While debates on the globalization of gay identity have been marked by an ambivalence over the development of gay identities and politicized communities outside of the West, work on the globalization of sexuality more generally has tended to have been marked by concerns with the worse excesses of what Smith (1997) has termed the “satanic geographies of globalization.” Here we are concerned with the trafficking of women forced into prostitution. Contemporary moral panics on the scale and extent of the trafficking of women for prostitution across national borders mask the extent to which sex work has been intimately connected to the development of the global capitalist system. The transnational migration of sex workers has taken place for centuries. However, there is a perception we are seeing an acceleration in the scale of the phenomenon resulting from increased mobility across national borders – as witnessed by the increasing numbers from Eastern Europe working in the sex industry in Western Europe.

No abstract

No abstract