Introduction

Queer displacement is a central theme within the popular song ‘Smalltown Boy’, Bronski Beat's first single from their debut album. A young gay man stands alone on a platform waiting for a train to transport him to a more hopeful place; ‘the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face’. The feelings of pain, loss and hopelessness that permeate the song generate a powerful image of a generic small town inhospitable to queer life. The second verse and chorus (‘run away, turn away’) illustrate the concept of mobility within popular and academic understandings of the (im)possibility of queer life in regional and rural areas, ‘the answers you seek will never be found at home, the love that you need will never be found at home’. To actualize a queer identity and find love, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+ ) people are thought to move from the regions to safer and more accepting urban environments (Gorman- Murray, 2007; Cover et al, 2020). Reinforcing this narrative of displacement are cautionary tales of discrimination or violence against LGBTIQA+ who (mistakenly) try to settle or remain in the regions. From this metropolitan viewpoint, rural and regional areas are constructed as strange, distant and filled with populations hostile to LGBTIQA+ communities and dangerous individuals (Halberstam, 2005).

These distinct but complementary narratives – rural- to- urban journeys of queer self- discovery (Gorman- Murray, 2007) and the discrimination and violence that LGBTIQA+ are potentially subject to in regional areas – have contributed to what Halberstam (2005) terms a metronormative narrative. LGBTIQA+ people living outside of urban centres are constructed as ‘sad’ or ‘lonely’ or, alternatively, ‘stuck in a place that they would leave if they only could’, whereas queers who migrate to metropolitan centres are able to fully express their gender identity and sexuality (Halberstam, 2005: 36). Metronormativity significantly shapes LGBTIQA+ focused research, policy and service design, but falling outside this hegemonic frame are the complex ways that LGBTIQA+ people find a sense of place, forge connections and establish a sense of belonging in rural and regional areas.