Where the personal is political

Abstract

The Queer Asylum Stories project collected interviews with people who had successfully gained asylum based on their sexuality. The focus of this article is on life stories leading up to and triggering the decision to seek asylum, and the processes of formation of the interviewees’ queer subjectivity. The discussion draws on the three related constructs of interpellation, ideological becoming and habitus, and considers the role of queer activism, understood as a dimension of queer habitus as theorised in the foundational work of Didier Eribon. Finding that the term ‘activism’ is widely used but infrequently defined, the article suggests that activism in general, and queer activism in particular, need to be defined explicitly and explored in order to gain a deeper understanding of what is involved. It provides a working definition of queer activism to guide this process.