When the spotlight is always on the neighborhood: LGBTQ people from a Muslim background deconstructing imagined borders in Brussels, Belgium

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of LGBTQ people from a Muslim background in their navigations of different areas of Brussels, and their narratives on such experiences. It builds on literature on the territorialization of homo/bi/transphobia to neighborhoods framed as “Muslim” in continental Western Europe, and the imagination of rigid borders separating these areas from other parts of the city. The article presents analysis of semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ people from a Muslim background on their experiences of these demarcations. The analysis of data calls for a deconstruction of rigid discourses of difference and division at work in the city. This allows for an understanding of the complex ways in which LGBTQ people from a Muslim background relate to different areas of the city, and how their multiple crossings into/from racialized-as-Muslim neighborhoods escape the rigidity of essentialized imaginations of the city along civilizational lines.