Identity, Mobility, and Urban Place-Making

Abstract

This article offers a nuanced analysis of identity reconstitution in transnational gay relations. Drawing from critical ethnography, the author focuses on Filipino gay-identified hosts, who remain invisible in global analyses of sexuality and tourism, as they create a gay space in Malate, an ex-sex and current tourist district in the city of Manila. Challenging the perception that gay identity is Western made, the author focuses on how gay host identity is constituted through hosts’travel/mobility and in relation to urban place. She discusses place-making as a strategy that allows gay hosts to see their identities transformed in Malate despite their social exclusion in the process of urban gentrification.