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Queera ungdomars narrativ om urbana normer och ruralt motstånd

Abstract

This article explores how queer youth outside of urban areas relate to and oppose dominant narratives about place. The concept of big cities as self-evident is in Swedish research frequently referred to as an urban norm. This is our starting point, combined with a view of place as relationally constructed by ongoing negotiations (Massey 2004). 

Urban norm includes a general expectation that young people should want to move to big cities. For young queers this expectation also concerns gender and/or sexuality. Queer lives are associated with cities and not expected to take place elsewhere. Non-urban queers are predicted to move both from the closet into openness and from the countryside to the city, a notion referred to as metronormativity (Halberstam 2005).   

The study’s 20 participants all somehow refer to their homes as peripheral. Narrative analysis was used to explore how the participants experience and negotiate place in relation to age and queerness. The result shows that queer youth outside urban areas are aware of, and relate to, urban norm and metronormativity. Many question the idea that everyone appreciates big city life. Some prefer to stay (or move back), but this choice depend on the possibility of queer community.  

The participants actively negotiate place and take charge of changing both material and discursive conditions. Their critique concerns lack of representation and meeting places, unfair resource distribution and the idea of the preferred urban lifestyle. They create counter narratives by constructing positive, even idyllic, conceptions of rural life, as well as changing material conditions by organizing queer meeting places and events.