Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the mobility paths to “elsewhere” of young queer professionals who are trying to align their career prospects and economic security to their personal life in the contemporary United States with ever-changing conservative politics that affect LGBTQA+ people.

Paper long abstract:

In addition to (precarious) work-based mobility that affects many young professionals in the United States, young queer professionals also evaluate potential political effects on their personal lives as queers: will they be able to form close romantic and/or kin relations? Will they feel safe on the streets? Will they be able “to be themselves”? Such alertness not only additionally affects career chances but also mobility paths.

Based on in-depth interviews, I follow my interlocutors’ mobility paths from “red” (republican and/or conservative) states, cities, and towns to “blue” (democratic and/or liberal) states, cities, and “hubs” that lead to usually well-planned, although temporary “elsewheres” that provide a safe space and queer or queer-friendly community. Thus, in this paper, I explore the “elsewhereness” as in-betweenness that comes into being through hope for a place providing togetherness, a sense of belonging, very tangible safety, and “being oneself” combined with job offers or chances for education. In contemporary ever-changing political circumstances that affect LGBTQA+ people, “elsewhereness” becomes as much a process from “here” to “there”, as it is a state of “not-here/not-yet-there” that stems from enforced temporariness based on ever-present political alertness. “Elsewhereness” – that does and does not exist – becomes an imagined escape route within a country that is full of pockets of inequality and marginality.