AMBIVALENT HOMONATIONALISMS

Abstract

Prompted by a concern with the territorial and affective governance of transnational queer migration, and with a focus on state regulations of ‘same-sex’ family class migration in Canada, this essay explores the psychic and geopolitical economies of locating ‘home’ vis-à-vis (homo)nationalized belongings. Based on research conducted in Toronto, a city in which nearly half of the residents were born outside of the country, this critical exploration is grounded in narratives created through interviews with LGBTQ migrants. The interview narratives open space to consider how discourses and representations of love and intimacy are brought into coherence with national structures of feeling. I argue that ‘same-sex’ relationship recognition in Canada's immigration system mobilizes homonational identifications and attachments given the centrality of immigration and border controls to a transnational geopolitical economy of unevenly distributed vulnerabilities.