Mapping Homo/Transphobia
The Valorization of the LGBT Protection Category in the Refugee-Granting System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i1.1929Keywords:
LGBT, refugees, asylum seekers, asylum system, map of homophobiaAbstract
A burgeoning interest in lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) rights has been noted to raise among the ‘temples of global capitalism’ (Rao 2015) such as the World Bank, governments and supranational institutions such as the EU Parliament dealing with the allocation of monetary funding (Browne et al. 2015), as well as within the corporate world at a global scale. The LGBT acronym thus gains new meanings, as it is used and valorised by capital institutions and corporations. Importantly, the re-signification of the LGBT category has also occurred within the system of international protection and immigration policies at a time of strong immigration restrictions. In this article, we examine how neoliberalism reshapes the LGBT signifier as a valorized protection category by looking at the case of asylum for gender and sexual minorities within EU geopolitics. By analysing the French asylum system, we want to address the question of why and how refugee-granting processes erase or flatten locally-situated queer histories, experiences and social worlds. We argue that it is important to move away from an analysis aimed at reinforcing the ‘sexual democratic’ values of some countries versus what is cast as the ‘cultural homo/transphobia’ of others. Through a particular attention to the mapping of homophobia, the article will aim to unpack how queer asylum claimants are situated in a giuridico-legal interstice from which they cannot challenge a colonial structure of thought about the schematic geography of homo/transphobia.
References
Akin, Deniz. 2017. Queer asylum seekers: Translating sexuality in Norway. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(3), 458–474.
Akoka, Karen. 2012. La Fabrique Du Réfugié à l’Ofpra (1952-1992) Du Consulat Des Réfugiés à l’administration Des Demandeurs d’asile. Université de Poitiers: Poitiers.
Awondo, Patrick, Geschiere, Peter and Reid, Graeme. 2012. Homophobic Africa? Toward A More Nuanced View. African Studies Review 55(03), 145–68.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2007. Producing Epistemologies of Ignorance in the Political Asylum Application Process. Identities 14(5), 603–29.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2008. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2018. Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Borillo, Daniel and Mecary Caroline. 2019. Faut-il Boycotter Les Palaces du Sultan? Libération April 2nd (Accessed January 2020) https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2019/04/02/faut-il-boycotter-les-palaces-du-sultan_1718858.
Browne, Kath, Banerjea, Niharika, Bakshi Leela and Nick McGlynn.2015. Intervention: ‘Gay-Friendly or Homophobic? The Absence and Problems of Global Standards’. Antipode Online: https://antipodeonline.org/2015/05/11/gay-friendly-or-homophobic/
Castels, Stephen, de Haas, Hein and Miller, H. Mark.2013. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Cesaro, Sara. 2019. Presentation Title: ‘Discussing sexual violence towards LGBT migrants: between sexual and racial boundaries’ at the ‘Crossing Sexual Borders. Gender & Sexuality in Migration’ conference at Paris 8 (13 and 14 June), organised by Éric Fassin and Manuela Salcedo.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2001. The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence. Law & Social Inquiry 26(1), 63–94.
d’Halluin-Mabillot, Estelle. 2012. Les épreuves de l’asile: associations et réfugiés face aux politiques du soupçon. Paris: EHESS.
Daniel, E. Valentine and Knudsen, John Chr. eds. 1995. Mistrusting refugees. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dauvergne, Catherine, and Millbank, Jenni. 2003. Burdened by proof: how the Australian refugee review tribunal has failed lesbian and gay asylum seekers. Federal Law Review 31, 299–342.
Dos Ventos Lopes Heimer, Rosa. 2020. Homonationalist/Orientalist Negotiations: The UK Approach to Queer Asylum Claims. Sexuality & Culture, 174–196.
Dustin, Moira and Held, Nina. 2018. In or out? A queer intersectional approach to particular social group membership and credibility in SOGI asylum claims in Germany and the UK. Genius (2), 74-87.
Edenborg, Emil. 2018. Homophobia as Geopolitics: ‘Traditional Values’ and the Negotiation of Russia’s Place in the World. In: Mulholland J., Montagna N., Sanders-McDonagh E. (eds) Gendering Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 67–87.
Farris, Sara. 2017. In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fassin, Eric. 2010. National Identities and Transnational Intimacies: Sexual Democracy and the Politics of Immigration in Europe, Public Culture 22(3), 507–529.
Fassin, Didier. 2013. The Precarious Truth of Asylum. Public Culture 25(1), 39–63.
Genova, Nicholas De and Peutz, Nathalie eds. 2010. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Giametta, Calogero. 2017. The Sexual Politics of Asylum: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the UK Asylum System. New York, London: Routledge.
Giametta, Calogero. 2018.New asylum protection categories and elusive filtering devices: the case of ‘Queer asylum’ in France and the UK. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1500172
Gill, Nick and Anthony Good, eds. 2019. Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gosine, Andil. 2018. Rescue, and Real Love: same sex desire in international development. In Corinne L. Mason (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies: London, New York. 102–118.
Haritaworn, Jin. 2012. Women’s rights, gay rights and anti-Muslim racism in Europe’. European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(1/2), 73–78.
Klapeer, Christine M. 2018. Dangerous Liaison? (Homo)Developmentalism, sexual modernization and LGBTQI rights in Europe. In Corinne L. Mason (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies: London, New York. 102–118.
Kobelinsky, Carolina. 2012a. L’asile gay : jurisprudence de l’intime à la Cour nationale du droit d’asile. Droit et société (82), 583–601.
Kobelinsky, Carolina. 2012b. ‘Sont-Ils de Vrais Réfugiés ?’ Les Tensions Morales Dans La Gestion Quotidienne de l’asile. 155–73 in Économies morales contemporaines, Bibliothèque de l’Iris, edited by D. Fassin and J.-S. Eideliman. Paris: La Découverte.
Kulpa, Robert and Mizielinska, Joanna (eds.).2014. De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European perspectives. Surrey: Ashgate.
LaViolette, Nicole. 2009. Independent human rights documentation and sexual minorities: An ongoing challenge for the Canadian refugee determination process. International Journal of Human Rights 13(2/3), 437–476.
Lewis, Rachel A. 2014. ‘Gay? Prove It’: The Politics of Queer Anti-deportation Activism. Sexualities 17 (8), 958–975.
McClintock, Anne.1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1st Edition). New York, London: Routledge.
Mills, Charles Wade. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca, N.Y. etc., Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Pays multiples: Cornell University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review 30/1, 61–88.
Murray, David, A.B. 2014. The (not so) straight story: Queering migration narratives of sexual orientation and gendered identity refugee claimants. Sexualities 17(4), 451–471.
Murray, David, A.B. 2015. Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham,London: Duke University Press.
Puwar, Nirmal. 2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Raboin, Thibaut. 2016. Exhortations of happiness: Liberalism and nationalism in the discourses on LGBTI asylum rights in the UK. Sexualities, 20(5–6), 663–681.
Raboin, Thibaut. 2017. Discourses on LGBT Asylum in the UK: Constructing a queer haven. Manchester: Manchester University.
Rao, Rahul. 2014. The location of homophobia. London Review of International Law, (2) 2, 169–199.
Rao, Rahul. 2015. Global Homocapitalism. Radical Philosophy 194, 38–49.
S Chelvan. 2011. Put your hands up (If you feel love)—A critical analysis of HJ (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) [2010]. Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, 25(1), 56–66.
Salcedo, Manuela and Fassin, Eric. 2015. Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44, 1117–25.
Schuster, Liza. 2018. Fatal flaws in the UK asylum decision-making system: an analysis of Home Office refusal letters, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1552827
Spijkerboer, Thomas. 2013. Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum. London: Routledge.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 2013. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Squire, Vicki. 2009. The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stoler, Anne Laura. 2002. Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance. Archival Science, 2/1-2, 87–109.
Sullivan, Shannon and Nancy Tuana, eds. 2007. Race and epistemologies of ignorance. Albany, N.Y., Etats-Unis d’Amérique: State University of New York Press.
Ticktin, Miriam. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Valluy, Jérôme. 2008. Du Retournement de l’asile (1948-2008) à La Xénophobie de Gouvernement. Cultures et Conflits (69), 81–111.
Zetter, Roger. 2007. More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies, 20(2), 172–92.
Akoka, Karen. 2012. La Fabrique Du Réfugié à l’Ofpra (1952-1992) Du Consulat Des Réfugiés à l’administration Des Demandeurs d’asile. Université de Poitiers: Poitiers.
Awondo, Patrick, Geschiere, Peter and Reid, Graeme. 2012. Homophobic Africa? Toward A More Nuanced View. African Studies Review 55(03), 145–68.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2007. Producing Epistemologies of Ignorance in the Political Asylum Application Process. Identities 14(5), 603–29.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2008. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge.
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy. 2018. Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Borillo, Daniel and Mecary Caroline. 2019. Faut-il Boycotter Les Palaces du Sultan? Libération April 2nd (Accessed January 2020) https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2019/04/02/faut-il-boycotter-les-palaces-du-sultan_1718858.
Browne, Kath, Banerjea, Niharika, Bakshi Leela and Nick McGlynn.2015. Intervention: ‘Gay-Friendly or Homophobic? The Absence and Problems of Global Standards’. Antipode Online: https://antipodeonline.org/2015/05/11/gay-friendly-or-homophobic/
Castels, Stephen, de Haas, Hein and Miller, H. Mark.2013. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Cesaro, Sara. 2019. Presentation Title: ‘Discussing sexual violence towards LGBT migrants: between sexual and racial boundaries’ at the ‘Crossing Sexual Borders. Gender & Sexuality in Migration’ conference at Paris 8 (13 and 14 June), organised by Éric Fassin and Manuela Salcedo.
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2001. The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence. Law & Social Inquiry 26(1), 63–94.
d’Halluin-Mabillot, Estelle. 2012. Les épreuves de l’asile: associations et réfugiés face aux politiques du soupçon. Paris: EHESS.
Daniel, E. Valentine and Knudsen, John Chr. eds. 1995. Mistrusting refugees. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dauvergne, Catherine, and Millbank, Jenni. 2003. Burdened by proof: how the Australian refugee review tribunal has failed lesbian and gay asylum seekers. Federal Law Review 31, 299–342.
Dos Ventos Lopes Heimer, Rosa. 2020. Homonationalist/Orientalist Negotiations: The UK Approach to Queer Asylum Claims. Sexuality & Culture, 174–196.
Dustin, Moira and Held, Nina. 2018. In or out? A queer intersectional approach to particular social group membership and credibility in SOGI asylum claims in Germany and the UK. Genius (2), 74-87.
Edenborg, Emil. 2018. Homophobia as Geopolitics: ‘Traditional Values’ and the Negotiation of Russia’s Place in the World. In: Mulholland J., Montagna N., Sanders-McDonagh E. (eds) Gendering Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 67–87.
Farris, Sara. 2017. In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fassin, Eric. 2010. National Identities and Transnational Intimacies: Sexual Democracy and the Politics of Immigration in Europe, Public Culture 22(3), 507–529.
Fassin, Didier. 2013. The Precarious Truth of Asylum. Public Culture 25(1), 39–63.
Genova, Nicholas De and Peutz, Nathalie eds. 2010. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Giametta, Calogero. 2017. The Sexual Politics of Asylum: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the UK Asylum System. New York, London: Routledge.
Giametta, Calogero. 2018.New asylum protection categories and elusive filtering devices: the case of ‘Queer asylum’ in France and the UK. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1500172
Gill, Nick and Anthony Good, eds. 2019. Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gosine, Andil. 2018. Rescue, and Real Love: same sex desire in international development. In Corinne L. Mason (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies: London, New York. 102–118.
Haritaworn, Jin. 2012. Women’s rights, gay rights and anti-Muslim racism in Europe’. European Journal of Women’s Studies 19(1/2), 73–78.
Klapeer, Christine M. 2018. Dangerous Liaison? (Homo)Developmentalism, sexual modernization and LGBTQI rights in Europe. In Corinne L. Mason (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies: London, New York. 102–118.
Kobelinsky, Carolina. 2012a. L’asile gay : jurisprudence de l’intime à la Cour nationale du droit d’asile. Droit et société (82), 583–601.
Kobelinsky, Carolina. 2012b. ‘Sont-Ils de Vrais Réfugiés ?’ Les Tensions Morales Dans La Gestion Quotidienne de l’asile. 155–73 in Économies morales contemporaines, Bibliothèque de l’Iris, edited by D. Fassin and J.-S. Eideliman. Paris: La Découverte.
Kulpa, Robert and Mizielinska, Joanna (eds.).2014. De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European perspectives. Surrey: Ashgate.
LaViolette, Nicole. 2009. Independent human rights documentation and sexual minorities: An ongoing challenge for the Canadian refugee determination process. International Journal of Human Rights 13(2/3), 437–476.
Lewis, Rachel A. 2014. ‘Gay? Prove It’: The Politics of Queer Anti-deportation Activism. Sexualities 17 (8), 958–975.
McClintock, Anne.1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1st Edition). New York, London: Routledge.
Mills, Charles Wade. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca, N.Y. etc., Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Pays multiples: Cornell University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra. 1988. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review 30/1, 61–88.
Murray, David, A.B. 2014. The (not so) straight story: Queering migration narratives of sexual orientation and gendered identity refugee claimants. Sexualities 17(4), 451–471.
Murray, David, A.B. 2015. Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham,London: Duke University Press.
Puwar, Nirmal. 2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Raboin, Thibaut. 2016. Exhortations of happiness: Liberalism and nationalism in the discourses on LGBTI asylum rights in the UK. Sexualities, 20(5–6), 663–681.
Raboin, Thibaut. 2017. Discourses on LGBT Asylum in the UK: Constructing a queer haven. Manchester: Manchester University.
Rao, Rahul. 2014. The location of homophobia. London Review of International Law, (2) 2, 169–199.
Rao, Rahul. 2015. Global Homocapitalism. Radical Philosophy 194, 38–49.
S Chelvan. 2011. Put your hands up (If you feel love)—A critical analysis of HJ (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) [2010]. Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, 25(1), 56–66.
Salcedo, Manuela and Fassin, Eric. 2015. Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44, 1117–25.
Schuster, Liza. 2018. Fatal flaws in the UK asylum decision-making system: an analysis of Home Office refusal letters, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1552827
Spijkerboer, Thomas. 2013. Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum. London: Routledge.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 2013. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Squire, Vicki. 2009. The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stoler, Anne Laura. 2002. Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance. Archival Science, 2/1-2, 87–109.
Sullivan, Shannon and Nancy Tuana, eds. 2007. Race and epistemologies of ignorance. Albany, N.Y., Etats-Unis d’Amérique: State University of New York Press.
Ticktin, Miriam. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Valluy, Jérôme. 2008. Du Retournement de l’asile (1948-2008) à La Xénophobie de Gouvernement. Cultures et Conflits (69), 81–111.
Zetter, Roger. 2007. More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies, 20(2), 172–92.
Downloads
Published
2020-12-14
How to Cite
Giametta, C., & Havkin, S. (2020). Mapping Homo/Transphobia: The Valorization of the LGBT Protection Category in the Refugee-Granting System. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(1), 99–119. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i1.1929
Issue
Section
Research
License
Authors agree to publish their articles in ACME under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
