Como ser un gay

How can a meaning of belonging be forged in a setting where one’s existence is forbidden? That is the question that LSE’s Dr Centner and his co-author Harvard’s Manoel Pereira Neto explore in their groundbreaking research into Dubai’s expatriate queer men’s nightlife.

But it was not an easy topic to research. Dr Centner explains: “It's an illegal, or criminalised, identity and put of behaviours and practices, so in a very general sense, it's a taboo. And taboo subjects are very often under-researched, sometimes because people possess a hard period gaining access, gaining that trust, but also because, even if people earn that access, there could be significant repercussions for themselves as researchers, or for the people who are the research participants.

“As two queer researchers, we were able to enter the worlds of relatively privileged Western gay expatriates. Secrecy is often the norm, but the field was familiar to us, through previous visits and research projects.”