Paper short abstract:

While queer mobility has been subject of the discourses in queer studies occasionally in recent years, the figure of the gay escort, who travels the world, is widely unknown. The paper aims to shed light on this multi local lifestyle.

Paper long abstract:

Careful observers of certain 'notorious' websites have already noticed: Among the male escorts who are offering their sexual services to interested same sex oriented men there is a growing number of professional sex workers, whose major characteristics is mobility. Coming from the periphery of the EU, Mexico or even Australia, these GBQ self-identified young men decide to go "on tour" for reasons which are corresponding with the urge to escape from the boredom and/or homophobia in their places of origin to temporarily join the open gay communities of the liberal and gay friendly countries in Central Europe. But since their access to the European labor markets is restricted, these trips can only be financed by professional sex work carried out at their travel destinations.

Based on multi sited ethnographic research, carried out in 2012/13, the paper aims to shed light on the multi local lifestyle of traveling escorts from an everyday perspective and to discuss it with respect to recent discourses on the "Circuits of Queer Mobility" (Puar). Taking into consideration the interrelations of class and economy, geopolitical contexts and queer sexualities, special attention will be given to the question if the trips of the mobile escorts necessarily guide them from "repression to liberation" (Luibhéid) and from social disintegration to social acceptance.