Borders of desire: Gender and sexuality at the Eastern borders of Europe

by Elissa Helms (Editor), Tuija Pulkkinen (Editor)

Borders of desire takes a novel approach to the study of rather than seeing them only as obstacles to the fulfillment of human desires, this collection focuses on how borders can also be productive of desire. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with sites along the eastern borders of Europe, particularly in the Baltics and the Balkans, the studies in this volume illuminate how gendered and sexualized desires are generated by the existence of borders and how they are imagined. As the chapters show, borders can create new desires expressed as aspirations, resentments, and actions including physical movements across borders for pleasure or work, or collective enactments of political ideals or resistance. The collection also shows how the persistent east/west symbolic border continues to act as a source of these desires in European political and social life.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published June 20, 2023

About the author

Elissa L. Helms is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University.