Captive While Waiting to Be Free: Legal Violence and LGBTQ Asylum Applicant Experiences in the USA

Abstract

In this article, I demonstrate how US asylum practices and immigration regulations impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) asylum applicants in distinct and traumatic ways. I conducted interviews with 18 LGBTQ applicants from Caribbean and African countries in 2018. In the analysis, I show that legal mechanisms intended to curb fraud—including work restrictions and shifting asylum timelines—produce traumatic outcomes for LGBTQ asylum applicants in four ways: isolation and loneliness, prolonged uncertainty, mental vulnerability, and physical vulnerability. This trauma is compounded by broader systems of homophobia and transphobia that make disclosing gender identity and sexual orientation difficult and prevent the development of protective social networks within immigrant communities and white, US-born LGBTQ spaces. I argue that legal procedures are not necessarily preventing or flushing out fraudulent cases; they serve as regulatory practices predicated on heteronormativity and inflict legal violence on LGBTQ asylum applicants. This work has implications not only for the scholarly study of sexuality and immigration, but also for immigration reform, starting from how particular kinds of migration are conceptualized at the bureaucratic level. Reconceptualizing asylum policy will require a shift in focus from fraud to protection, from assuming illegitimacy to ensuring human rights for all.