Research directions
Homosexuality and working classes, an approach by the ways of life
By contributing to different fields of the sociological discipline, urban, sexuality and race in particular, this project questions the relations between homosexuality and its context of establishment with regard to male homosexuals living in social housing estates in France, in order to depict the specificity of their lifestyles. Using the concept of “lifestyle”, inherited from the sociology of Maurice Halbwachs, and through empirical work with gay men who live or have lived within the working-class neighbourhoods in the Paris suburb since the 1980s, this research attempts to answer the following questions: How does one become homosexual while living in the suburbs of Paris? What are the effects of spatial marginalization and racial discrimination on the homosexual identification of the men studied? How do the social norms of gender present within these spaces shape the affective practices and discourses of homosexuals? To answer these questions, we propose several hypotheses: the immobility of individuals; their belief in homosexuality as a private aspect of life; the management of this invisibility in the face of family norms; and the implication of the context of tolerance towards homosexuality in the maintenance of sociability within gay neighbourhoods. Using qualitative methods, mixing biographical interviews and ethnography, this project will therefore make it possible to respond to the supposed impossibility of homosexuality at the bottom of the social space.
