Racialized youth mobilities in European nightlife cultures: Negotiating belonging, distinction and exclusion in urban leisure

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines comparatively the modalities of mobility as they relate to the ethnic club scenes that have emerged as leisure contexts for ethnic minority youth in different European metropolitan centers. Based on a four-year ethnographic research project that collected data in ethnic minority queer and heteronormative nightlife scenes, the article presents findings from Paris, London and Berlin that point to diverse articulations through which mobilities matter and can be realized by racialized young people with migrant backgrounds when “going out.” However, what these differences simultaneously illuminate is the overarching importance of intersectional spatialized inequalities that are transformed in the context of neoliberal urban restructuring in metropolitan centers. Thus, moving through nighttime metropolitan city spaces is fraught with challenges that are themselves classed, racialized and gendered.