Session 4b: Intimate Space, Intimate Geographies
Chair: Niall Hanlon

Intimacy and Absence across the Globe: The Literary Relationship between Georgiana Molloy and Captain James Mangles
Jesssica White
London Consortium, University of London, United Kingdom

How can intimacy be created and maintained between two people have never met, and who are separated by ten thousand miles of land and sea?  This paper explores the relationship between Georgiana Molloy, who emigrated to Western Australia in 1829, and Captain James Mangles, an amateur botanist who lived in London.  At his request, Molloy collected and shipped specimens of Australian flora to him.  With the boxes she sent letters which, with their lightly flirtatious style, differed markedly from those she had previously written to family and friends. 
As her letters sailed to England, and Mangles’ boxes of gifts were sent to Australia, the correspondents established a relationship that was purely literary, and yet of monumental importance to Molloy.  Her passion for botany overflowed into her correspondence with the man who initiated it, resulting in rich, potent letters that drew on the sensuous language of botany and, in doing so, compelled Mangles’ attention.
To this end, the paper argues that absence is a condition that, however unwanted, is immensely productive.  The spaces in the relationship – between England and Australia, between Mangles and Molloy, between the words on the page  – were necessarily filled by Molloy’s imagination.  This led to an abbreviation – however metaphorical - of the distance between them.
This process was mirrored by the act of sending tangible products of their regard.  Letters, boxes and seeds crossed the oceans and, when unfolded and unpacked, conveyed additional meaning to the recipient.  It is this hinging of meaning – between what is present and absent, and what is said and unsaid - that represents Molloy’s intimacy with Mangles while he remained absent, on the opposite side of the globe.  

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Migrating Sexualities, Migration Romances
Martina Cvajner
Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Università degli studi di Trento, Trento, Italy

Sexuality and migration are both experiences that challenge the established norms and behaviours of the actors involved in these processes.  Both migratory and sexual experiences are fertile grounds for the   transformation of identities and behaviours. What does it happen when the two experiences are intertwined?
In this paper I will analyze how actors change their sexual behaviour, norms and attitudes in the process of settling down in a new social environment in the receiving society. Which kind of mechanisms regulate their romantic and sexual conduct when living in a different context, removed from the usual networks of established practices? To what degree they modify their behaviour in order to integrate in the new context? To what degree their background, norms and values may be re-interpreted and used as a resource in their migratory trajectory?  To what degree they stick to their previous normative or practical models as a resistance to assimilation pressures? How do migrants react, exploit or adopt the prejudices concerning their sentimental and sexual identity in the host society? All these specific questions are variants of a traditional social science problem: how does a change in the social environment modify the values, norms and practices of the actors? The case of intimate behaviour, including but not only sexual, is a particularly important field for exploring such a problem. It will be the main basis of my paper.
The paper will present the results of a  one year-long ethnography  with two groups of East European women migrating to Italy without their families. I will describe what I have observed in terms of the migrants’ sexualized self in Italy, the way they live their sexuality in a migration context, how they manage to establish intimate relationships even within the constraints of their socio-economic conditions, how a sexuality dimension is lived and performed in public and private contexts, which mechanisms they enact and how are they connected to their identity and cultural membership. Particular attention will be given to sexual symbols and their time/space connotations: As the research project has involved also following such women in their returns to their sending location, it is possible to analyze the changes in behaviour and public performance in the sending and receiving context.

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Transnational Love: Nomadic Youth and their Negotiation of Intimate Relationships
Danae McLeod
University of York, United Kingdom

For many young individuals, a period spent working and travelling overseas has become something of a rite of passage. Clearly, this has policy implications, but what are less often considered are individual experiences, such as implications for relationship formation/management and identity construction. This paper examines the experiences of young individuals who, either while travelling or interacting with someone who was travelling, began an intimate relationship with a person with a different nationality to their own. This group was of particular interest due to the current trend of ‘working abroad’ for an extended period, and also due to the supposed centrality of decision making in their lives. The work examines a selection of the potential issues which may arise when these ‘nomadic’ individuals attempt to amalgamate the practicalities of their daily life with the heady emotion of love. It considers whether love is a suitable sole criterion for the ‘choice’ of an intimate partner, or whether location, career, distance, and national identity play a significant role. This paper introduces the initial qualitative data collected from 25 individuals who were, or had previously been involved in an international relationship. In order to focus the research, interviews were conducted predominantly with individuals from western countries, thus limiting issues of language and other cultural influences. The paper also draws on the work of leading theorists to identify four themes that have relevance to the study of international relationships: globalisation; love and emotion; identity; and individualisation. The soundness of these to the study of relationships is identified and future implications considered. The research addresses issues that, are thus far not given due consideration in the literatures regarding contemporary intimate relationships, love, identity, the self and reflexivity, in the broader context of globalisation.