The Sexual Politics of Asylum: Lived Experiences of Sexual Minority Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the UK
Published on 1 January, 2014.
The thesis explores lived experiences of sexual minority asylum seekers and refugees in the UK and the analysis emerges from a two-year long ethnography with 60 people. I chose to focus on sexuality in the context of asylum in order to trace parallelisms and differences amongst the conditions of subalternity to which nonheteronormative subjects can be exposed in different geo-political locations. In the process I seek to: i) understand the specificity of the experiences of identification and belonging of people claiming asylum for fear of persecution in their countries of origin because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and ii) to elicit and examine the migratory experience from the asylum claimant's standpoint within the structural constrictions emerging from the current UK migration regime. The study contributes to current migration and sexuality scholarship by offering a critique of recent formations of neocolonial political discourses with the emergence of sexuality as a legitimate field for claiming rights in the realm of international relations. In this regard, my analytical endeavour is not dedicated solely to exploring respondents' supposed subalternity in their countries of origin, rather my focus is to examine the situations that produce states of subaltemity whilst living in Britain. I seek to highlight that the passage from oppression in one's country to liberation in the UK is much more complex than how it is dominantly portrayed in the current global ethical-political stage.