Men and Masculinities at the Margins

Addressing the longstanding shortcomings of theorising on men, masculinity and gender relations by examining how power operates through marginal positions, this book explores how masculinities are constructed, marginalised, and resisted across a wide range of geographies by bringing intersectionality and decoloniality into sustained dialogue.

Men and Masculinities at the Margins moves beyond understandings of masculine marginality as a fixed condition to instead distinguish between margins as relational positions and marginalisation as historically situated processes shaped by inequality and power. In doing so, it places hegemonic masculinity under critical scrutiny, revealing both its continued relevance and its conceptual limitations. The contributions to this volume empirically ground engagements with this perspective, drawing on research from across the Global South and North to reveal how the processes of marginalisation are linked to colonial legacies, racialisation, class, precarity, caste, migration, violence, queerness, and digital transformations.

Essential for researchers in Sociology, Gender Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students, these contributions reposition the margins as central sites for rethinking men, masculinity and the dynamics of power in a deeply unequal world.

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 at University College Dublin, Ireland. By background, he is a medical anthropologist with a PhD from Columbia University, New York. He has published in areas of masculinities, sexual and reproductive rights; transnational migration; global health; and sexualities. He co-edited Unsustainable institutions of men (Routledge 2019) and is the author of Being a man in a transnational world (Routledge 2014). He has previously taught at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima; Georgetown University, Washington, DC; 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, 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); 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.