Abstract
In the last few years, asylum claims based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity (SOGI) have received increased attention within migration and queer studies. Mostly focusing on the refugee status determination process, these works have emphasized how the expectations of asylum institutions about “genuine queer refugees” lead to the exclusion of many applicants from SOGI asylum. This paper aims at shifting the analysis perspective from the legal categorization process to the impacts of everyday experienced categories of “asylum seekers” or “refugees” on queer migrants in the Parisian area. Using a three-year long ethnographic fieldwork, completed through interviews with queer asylum seekers and refugees, this paper investigates how refugeeness, understood as the objective and subjective effects of migration and asylum policies on individuals, contributes to shaping lived experiences of sexual and gender minorities in France. By drawing attention to the ways that the multiple power relationships queer asylum seekers and refugees have to face are spatially grounded, this paper discusses how an intersectional understanding of sexuality, gender, and refugeeness allows us to emphasize the role played by migration status in the negotiation of hetero- and cisnormativity. This paper also argues that far from remaining passive toward the categorization process they are subjected to, queer asylum seekers and refugees strategically appropriate the administrative categories with which they are associated. Such an analysis of lived experiences of queer asylum seekers and refugees in the country of arrival thus highlights the complex reshaping of social location caused by migration.
Highlights
In the late 1990s, sexual and gender minorities became eligible for refugee status in France, as in many other countries
Refugeeness and queerness have to be negotiated conjointly. When they apply for sexual orientation and/or gender identity (SOGI) asylum in France, queer migrants have to face, as in other countries, a rigid “biographical border” (Giametta, 2016) which may prevent them from accessing the protection they need
“genuine refugees” in an asylum system marked by a high level of suspicion, highlighting the paradox of countries often presented as a safe haven for sexual and gender minorities, but remaining unreachable for many SOGI asylum applicants
Summary
In the late 1990s, sexual and gender minorities became eligible for refugee status in France, as in many other countries. A more recent study has focused attention on the ways support organizations assist queer migrants with their asylum procedure (Cesaro, 2021). This paper aims at extending the analysis of the impacts of asylum and migration policies on queer migrants’ lives beyond the asylum determination process. By “displacing attention from borders to border crossers” (Ehrkamp, 2016, 6) this paper intends to investigate how the administrative categories of “asylum seeker” or “refugee” constrain the everyday lives of queer migrants based in the Parisian area. This article will discuss the particular ways in which refugeeness shapes the everyday lived experiences of queer migrants in the Parisian area and intersects with their social position of sexual or gender minority
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