This paper presents findings from a qualitative research project examining the dating narratives of single migrant men residing in Sweden and Italy. The study, analyzing 48 interviews with individuals from Syrian, Polish, Bangladeshi and Romanian backgrounds, along with ethnographic observations, employs a theoretical framework rooted in sexual capital theory and critical studies on men and masculinities. The analysis sheds light on the challenges faced by heterosexual single migrant men in their pursuit of intimate partners, attributing these difficulties to lower levels of social, economic and cultural capital, as well as the influence of their specific masculinities, which may be perceived as less attractive within the host societies. The paper argues that the migrant experience can be viewed as a distinctive sexual field wherein individuals encounter unique dynamics and obstacles in the realm of intimate relationships. The implications of these findings extend beyond the personal experiences of migrant men, offering insights into the broader socio-cultural landscape of host societies and the complex interplay between migration, masculinity and intimate relationships. 

In this chapter, we provide an overview of masculinity in relation to technology, entrepreneurship and organizations connected to technology entrepreneurship. In doing so, we address how masculinity as an underlying gendered configuration of technology entrepreneurship, and particularly Big Tech, has been and can be conceptualized in masculinity studies, and how this kind of masculinity has taken centre stage as a dominant form of masculinity in global business masculinities, social media representations and films. We combine the elements of entrepreneurial and technology masculinities in order to address their importance for organizational forms and ideals. We also incorporate intersectional perspectives as far as they are applicable to the literature we review. We hint at the larger socio-cultural implications of the technoentrepreneurial masculinities that we outline. We want to emphasize, in particular, that the figuration of a hegemonic geek masculinity that we propose here needs to be contextualized within a wider frame of other gendered and racial inequalities in the tech industry. 

The article presents results from an interview study on migrant bachelors and discusses differences between Bangladeshi migrants in Italy and Syrian migrants in Sweden, in how they present as singles. Interviewees articulate a simplified distinction between singlehood in Europe and singlehood in Bangladesh or Syria. Singlehood has been theorized as wavering between a period of waiting and a lifestyle with its own inherent value. In our sample, while Bangladeshis describe bachelorhood as a period of waiting, distancing themselves from what they see as European singlehood, Syrians tend to embrace singlehood as inherently valuable and prefer a ‘European way’ of being single. We argue that this difference between the groups is connected not primarily to national or regional cultures, but to how racialized borders shape the two groups in Europe, as well as to the role of class positionalities in determining attitudes toward singlehood. 

As part of a global trend of improving the societal impact and relevance of science, co-creative platforms for developing new knowledge and innovations are increasingly common in Sweden and internationally (Mauser et al, 2013; Owen et al, 2013; Reypens et al, 2016). This study investigates two Swedish cases – The Gender Academy and Gender Contact Point – in order to scrutinize if, and if so how, the societal impact of gender studies may be reinforced by platforms for academia-society collaboration. Previous studies in the field of social innovation help distinguish mechanisms for organizational and societal transformation in these constellations (Westley et al, 2017; Howaldt et al, 2018). Our study reveals that both platforms engage researchers and stakeholders in innovation processes of joint identification, exploration and solution of societal and organizational challenges, as is common in social innovation. Both struggle, however, to bridge the critical agenda of the researchers and the constructive agendas of the stakeholders. They do this by emphasizing the potential of gender studies to improve organizational competitiveness, innovativeness and attractiveness, on the one hand, while advancing academic knowledge on mechanisms for organizational and societal transformation, on the other.

This chapter responds to the broad question of how gender and affect can be co-thought in studies of mobilities and transport. We regard transport and mobility systems as affective structures, where man–machine complexities are being performed. In this chapter, we exemplify these relations, focusing on how cyborgic entanglements of man–machine, transport and affective structures are staged, and enacted in selected historical, contemporary and future cases. We argue that emotion and affect are strong motivational powers that regulate how we travel, in what way we travel and how we appreciate different means of transportation. Last, we discuss whether the current and coming automatization of automobility can possibly disrupt rather than reify the historically strong connection between masculinity, the power of engines, speed and risk. Our question is: as the affective structures of automobility are anticipated to change when future forms of automobility will be more about “passengering” in automated and connected mobility systems, will this also fundamentally change the driver/technology relation?

This introductory chapter provides a rationale for the book, reviews some of the key theoretical underpinnings of posthumanism and new materialism and outlines how they have influenced feminist theorising in relation to debates about the subject, sex, gender, sexual difference, the body, affect, relationality, matter, agency, human and other-than-human entanglements, ecology and technology. The implications of these feminist engagements with posthumanism and new materialism for critical studies of men and masculinities are considered and a posthuman feminist critique of the subject of ‘Man’ as the ideal human is outlined. The authors reflect upon their own biographical intellectual and political journeys of engagement with these issues to ground these debates in their own shifting subjectivities. The chapter concludes with a guide to chapters by the contributors who, from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, bring these theoretical perspectives to life in their own considerations of what posthumanism and new materialism mean for the ‘man question’.

This book brings together the emerging insights of what posthumanism, new materialism and affect theory mean for 'the man question'. The contributors to this book interrogate the question of how 'Man' as a gendered being is entangled with nature, culture, materiality and corporeality, and they explore ways to unsettle men's sense of sovereignty to decentre anthropocentric masculinity. Men have to move from the centre of privilege which grants them supremacy before they can open themselves to the decentred, embodied, affective, vulnerable and relational self that is necessary to embrace the posthuman. This book explores the extent to which this is possible. The book will be of interest to academics, students and scholars across a range of disciplines who are engaging with the intersections of feminist studies with posthumanism and new materialism, especially as they relate to critical studies of men and masculinities. Chapters on fathering, pornography, ageing, affect, embodiment, entanglements with technology and nature and the implications of these issues for changing men and masculinities and the politics of critical masculinity studies' engagement with posthuman feminisms will interest students and academics across these diverse disciplines. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Ulf Mellström and Bob Pease. All rights reserved.