Men and Masculinities at the Margins

Sofia Aboim is Research Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She has led and participated in numerous research projects, including a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. Her research explores the intersections of gender, masculinities, migration, race, and ethnicity, with a particular focus on trans identities, postcolonial formations, and multiple marginalisations. Her recent publications include the article “From Mineworkers to Subaltern Entrepreneurs: Masculinity and Racial Capitalism across the Mozambique–South Africa Border” (Gender, Place & Culture, 2026); Colonial Senses, co-authored with F. C. Silva (Cambridge University Press, 2026); Gender Fields, co-authored with P. Vasconcelos (Routledge, 2025); and Political Modernity and Beyond, co-edited with J. M. Domingues and F. C. Silva (Routledge, 2025).Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila is an Associate Professor in Social Justice at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has published in areas of masculinities, sexual and reproductive rights, transnational migration, global health, and sexualities. His publications include Precarious Lives: Forced sterilisation and the struggle for reproductive justice in Peru (Global Public Health 2022); co-editor of Unsustainable Institutions of Men (Routledge 2019) and is the author of Being a Man in a Transnational World (Routledge 2014). He is the Director of the UCD Observatory of Masculinities and the Editor in Chief of SEXTANT: Masculinities, Sexualities and Decolonialities. He has previously worked at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima; Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and the University of the Philippines, Manila.Jeff Hearn is Professor of Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK; Professor Emeritus, Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finland; Senior Professor, Human Geography, Örebro University, Sweden; Extraordinary Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Western Cape, South Africa; and formerly Professor in Gender Studies, Linköping University and Örebro University. He is co-managing editor of the Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality book series and was co-chair of RINGS, the International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies 2014-2020. His research focusses on gender, sexuality, violence, age, work, organisations, policy, ICTs, and transnational processes, with a special interest in critical studies on men and masculinities. Recent books include Age at Work, with Wendy Parkin (2021), Knowledge, Power and Young Sexualities, with Tamara Shefer (2022); Digital Gender-Sexual Violations, with Matthew Hall and Ruth Lewis (2023); and Routledge Handbook on Men, Masculinities and Organizations (2024), Routledge International Handbook of Feminisms and Gender Studies (2025), and Interconnecting the Violences of Men (2025), all three co-edited.

“Many margins, many struggles, many masculinities. This is a rich collection of research with boys and men making their lives in the face of mass poverty, changing technology, global inequality and new patterns of bigotry and violence. There are striking insights into migration, emotions, the online world of gender, the realities of caste and race. And though there are tragedies here, the strongest impression I bring away from this book is the energy and creativity of the responses to hard conditions.”Raewyn Connell, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney, Australia"Men and Masculinities at the Margins is an inspiring and eloquent book that offers a critical lens through which to examine masculinities and the lives of men across diverse social and cultural contexts. It places particular emphasis on conditions of intersectional marginalisations, precariousness, and violences in a world where virtuality increasingly shapes the experience and configuration of masculine subjectivities. The book addresses the crucial challenges of conceiving masculinities as always 'situated', and the importance of understanding men and masculinities through a relational and historical perspective where structural and dynamic inequalities create the interstices through which power and resistance coexist and flow. The book explores these issues within the frameworks of decoloniality and intersectionality, showing stories of men who are racialised, classed, gendered, and sexualised within ageist, heteronormative, and ableist societies."Salvador Cruz Sierra, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico"The project of centering the margins for a better understanding of all masculinities is well overdue. Men and masculinities at the margins does this through a wide-ranging examination of the dynamic and relational constitution of masculinities historically, structurally, and intersectionally. With original and nuanced insights from around the world and in digital spaces, this theoretically generative volume thinks in multitudes. In its vision and purpose it demonstrates the very best of decolonial scholarship to chart a path for the next generation of masculinities research."Jordanna Matlon, American University, Washington DC, USA"This volume breaks new ground in examining the configurations of masculinity and the configurations of marginality in tandem. The introductory chapters make a convincing case that marginalised masculinities are central sites for innovative theorizations – specifically of the entanglements of gender with overlapping infrastructures of inequalities from racialized colonialism, capitalism, to technological developments. The authors locate men’s complex struggles for gendered and moral authority within their specific experiences of marginalization – from Brazilian young men involved in urban violence, to “casteed” corporate executives in India, and trans fathers on Tiktok. For those who are interested in the theorisation of masculinity from an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach grounded in the Global South, this is a must read!"Sealing Cheng, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Introduction; 1. Margins and Marginalisations: Men and Masculinities beyond the Centres; 2. Cuerpos negros: Black Male Bodies, Masculinities, Race and Resistance in Colombia; 3. Young, black and peripheral: marginal masculinities, racism and urban violence in a favela in Rio de Janeiro; 4. High-Value Men and Alpha Males: A Critical Examination of the Black Alphasphere; 5. Marginalization of Migrant Men and Masculinities: A conceptual framing for exploring migrant men's experiences; 6. Wounded Men on the Margins of Survival and Death: Unravelling the Intersections of Race, Masculinity, Class, Disability, and Violence; 7. A Decolonial Feminist Lens on Contemporary Media Representations of South African Masculinities and Men’s Violence against Women and Children; 8. Between War and Peace: Masculinities, Conflict and Social Violence; 9. Be a man, but not like that: Deciphering the Catch-22 of hegemonic masculinity in P/CVE approaches to men’s deradicalization; 10. Artificial Intelligence and the Reinforcement of Masculinity; 11. Everyday Activism of Maquillage and Sartorial Content Creation: Decolonial Masculinity and Gender Performance on Instagram; 12. Connected Masculinities: digital narratives on trans-masculinity among trans fathers in Ibero-American TikTok communities; 13. Hierarchies and Marginalisations of Masculinities among Young Gay Men in Brazil: An Intersectional Approach; 14. Queering Migrant Masculinities at the Margins: A Decolonial Study in Florence; 15. Colonial Desires and Digital Inequality in Gay Virtual Sociability Networks in São Paulo, Brazil; 16. Caste, Masculinity, and Meritocracy: Navigating Marginalised Masculinities in the Indian ICT Sector; 17. Masculinity, Poverty and Marginalisation: Emotional Struggles and Coping Strategies; 18. How to be a “Man”: The Social and Discursive Construction of Contemporary Indonesian Young Masculinities