Going out and making it home: on the roots, routes and homing of young queer men in Nairobi, Kenya

Public imagination and academic scholarship present queer migrants as being uprooted due to their embodiment of non-normative sexual identities. Drawing from ethnographic research with a male sex worker-led organisation (SLO) in Nairobi, including 41 in-depth interviews members, this paper explores perceived uprootedness by highlighting Kenyan migrants’ multi-layered multi-dimensional social experiences home. Using the concept ‘homing’, men’s lifelong efforts feel at home, embeddedness identities process. The SLO generates feelings safety, acceptance recognition provides ‘second home’ city. In process creating ties chosen families city, men still maintain close family back villages, while economic opportunities induce back-and-forth mobilities. individual trajectories might fluctuate yet fit within more linear route which they aspire acquire land properties ancestral homeland. analysis homing supports reimagining people’s mobilities that stresses society illustrates how it relates ‘queering’ African context.