“We are just with each other, everything is going to be okay”—BlackQueer rural–urban migration, danger and digital sexual desires

Abstract

Abstract Much research looking at Queer migration focuses on the movement of people between countries and continents, where countries of origin are deemed unsafe. However, literature shows that in South Africa there are more people migrating internally than those migrating into South Africa from other countries. In this article, I draw on 15 interviews with BlackQueers who moved from rural to urban areas in South Africa to explain their Queer-centric motivations for migrating internally, which enabled them to “confront what it means to be Queer” through physical and digital interactions. The digital world is important because it surpasses fixed geographies. Digital spaces offer a refuge that may not be available in offline spaces even when there are legal protections that state that this should not be the case. This article provokes transnational scholarship to pay equal attention to movements within countries and digital spaces as it does to cross-country flows.