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In this introduction to the themed section, we begin to explore how queer and precarity might be used to analyse how vulnerabilities are constituted across diverse spaces. We situate the contents of the themed section in relation to the context in which it was worked on, defined by the Covid-19 pandemic and the increased precarisation of Higher Education workers in the United Kingdom, as well as current literature on queerness and precarity. The interdisciplinary articles that follow are the work of early career feminist and queer scholars. We introduce them as grappling with a range of manifestations of precarity and their intersections with various categories of identity that might be recognisable as queer. Foregrounding navigations of embodied and structural aspects of precarity, these articles highlight the practices and relationalities that can emerge from being 'out of place', as well as specific opportunities and limitations of the aesthetic, and share a concern with the masking of difference as a function of precarity, including via broad analytic categories such as 'precarious' and 'queer'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on geographies of care identifies care work as a low-paid, menial and ultimately feminized activity. Much of the work in the field, unsurprisingly, has focused upon the plight of women and how the division of labour produces and sustains gender inequalities. We are interested in how new generations understand gender, work and care and the possibilities for generating heterogeneous, caring masculinities. Using creative methods, we engage young people in a series of critical masculinities workshops through which participants are asked to reflect upon what it means to be a man and materialize these ideas through arts and craft. Our school-based discussions with young people and their artworks reveal how participants place an acute emphasis on the felt, affective and emotional register of caring masculinities. We explore their creative endeavours to critically interrogate care as a gendered concept, interpret its 'troubled' relationship to masculinity, and analyse possibilities for future change. Our findings suggest masculine care practices have the potential to challenge and redistribute power across the gender order. However, we further found that hegemonic forms of masculinity could become consolidated and recuperated through caring acts, meaning gender power relations are not easily disrupted simply by men becoming caring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the everyday experiences of young white working-class men living in coastal towns badly affected by austerity programmes implemented in the UK since 2010. The lives and aspirations of marginal young men seldom feature in studies of the effects of economic crisis and austerity. These men are positioned at the intersection of several rhetorical constructions with contradictory and ambivalent affects. They are expected, and still expect, to become wage earners and providers, largely through their own efforts and self- improvement. A rhetoric of social mobility disguises structural inequality, producing a false promise of hope or 'cruel optimism' about future prospects. Simultaneously, young working- class men, especially those without employment, typically are constructed as a threat to (middle class) society, difficult or dangerous, and authors of their own disadvantage. We explore how young men, without regular work and often lacking family support, talk about everyday experiences, social relationships, feelings and emotions and hopes for the future in coastal towns with a particular place in the national imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the haptic geographies of embodied, material, and spatial anticipations of offline erotic encounters that Grindr users have in their homes. I explore how touch and place are co‐constituted, arguing that men who use Grindr are learning how to negotiate their erotic Grindr practices through anticipations, identities, and the places that encounters are situated. In this article, I use a haptic geographical framework to explore the embodied, material and spatial anticipations of offline Grindr encounters ‐ or hook‐ups – that happen in users homes. I bring haptic geographies in conversation with geographical work on sexuality and the digital to explore how a desire to touch is reconfigured when people meet in 'the flesh'. Grindr is a location‐based dating/hook‐up app that is used mainly by men looking for encounters – sexual, romantic, friendships, dates, online and offline – with other men. I draw on 30 semi‐structured interviews and four participant research diaries from Grindr users in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne in North East England. By using haptic geographies, I examine gender and sexuality at the bodily and domestic scale. I explore how touch and place are co‐constituted, arguing that men who use Grindr are learning how to negotiate their erotic Grindr practices through anticipations, identities and places that encounters are situated. Focusing on the embodied and spatial anticipations enables an understanding of the ways corporeal and digital practices are co‐constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial experiences of transgender and gender non‐conforming ("trans") people continue to occupy the margins of geography, especially compared to the amount of work centred on lesbian and gay lives. Though research on trans geographies in educational and health settings is expanding, most literatures stem from the USA. This paper shares findings from a study about the experiences of trans people who study and/or work on a specific university campus in northern England. Our findings demonstrate how particular spaces of the campus are generative of interactions which enable micro‐aggressions and misrecognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English coastal resorts are among the most deprived towns in the country, with levels of economic and social deprivation often exceeding those of the inner areas of large cities and former industrial settlements. Their dominant image in the media and other forms of representation, however, is of places of innocent fun and leisure, often associated with their history as holiday destinations for working-class families, although the darker side of these towns is not completely ignored. The lives of white working-class, year-round residents in these towns, however, seldom feature in representations or in policy and academic research. Here, we focus on the everyday lives of one group: young white working-class men whose employment opportunities have been adversely affected by economic decline, austerity and rising inequality. In places where employment is largely restricted to customer-facing jobs in the holiday trade, the dominant construction of youthful masculinity and the associated rhetorical view of these men as troublesome not only excludes them from the labour market but exacerbates their marginality. Through interviews in four English resorts, we explore the causes and consequences of their precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]