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This article reports on our analysis of 120 refugee cases from Australia, Canada, and Britain where an actual or threatened forced marriage was part of the claim for protection. We found that forced marriage was rarely considered by refugee decision makers to be a harm in and of itself. This finding contributes to understanding how gender and sexuality are analysed within refugee law, because the harm of forced marriage is experienced differently by lesbians, gay men and heterosexual women. We contrast our findings in the refugee case law with domestic initiatives in Europe aimed at protecting nationals from forced marriages both within Europe and elsewhere. We pay particular attention to British initiatives because they are in many ways the most far-reaching and innovative, and thus the contrast with the response of British refugee law is all the more stark.

Although asylum for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals has been on the international human rights agenda since the early to mid 1990s, lesbian asylum cases do not tend to figure centrally in analyses of the relationship between refugee law and international human rights law. While a number of regional and comparative studies of lesbian asylum exist by legal activists and scholars, a discussion of the politics of lesbian asylum claims has so far remained absent from both feminist and queer studies. In this contribution, I explore how the subject of lesbian asylum is treated within the context of film and visual media. Focusing particular attention on Angelina Maccarone’s 2005 film Unveiled about an Iranian lesbian asylum-seeker, I consider the ways in which film and media might transform how we conceive of and imagine lesbian rights. As I will suggest, Unveiled offers important insights into the kinds of representational challenges that are specific to lesbian asylum claims. In this way, I argue, the film constitutes a much-needed intervention into current advocacy on behalf of the issue of lesbian asylum.

The goal of immigrant settlement services is to help newcomers to establish themselves in Canada, and to participate fully in the community’s economic and sociallife. Although service providers have recognized the settlement needs of various other populations, those specific to lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) newcomers have, for the most part, been overlooked. In addition to coping with language and cultural differences, and possibly discrimination based on race, gender, or disability, LGB newcomers may also encounter barriers related to their sexual orientation. This article describes a qualitative study of the perceptions of 24 participants—6 LGB newcomers,and 18 settlement service workers—regarding the challenges faced by LGB people,and the issues relevant to serving them. The study highlights the importance for social workers of understanding newcomers’ values and practices in regard to same-sex orientation; the need for safety and acceptance of LGB people in immigrant communities; and the necessity of welcoming newcomers into mainstream LGB communities. The article also proposes some directions for developing more inclusive and responsive services.

This essay demonstrates the ways in which some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) rights and immigrant rights organizations enact a form of cultural citizenship that relies upon normative belonging with their depiction of LGBTQ and immigrant rights. It also shows how other groups engender what Aimee Carrillo Rowe refers to as “differential belonging,” by directly confronting normative and exclusionary discourses. This paper first justifies linking these two issues by establishing the notion of the “stranger” as a way to describe how both migrants and queers threaten the way the nation state sees itself. It then unpacks both the normative and differential discourses of belonging in relation to two prominent neoliberal values: family values and good citizenship. Finally, this essay considers the implications of differential belonging as a strategy of cultural citizenship that may confront the exclusions that currently constitute the way the US nation-state imagines belonging.

The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance:  ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos!  [Here we are, and we’re not leaving!].  This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder:  ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [… and if they throw us out, we’ll come right back!].  It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but genuinely productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence.  In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!”, the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals (LGBTs) face persecution and violence around the globe. Many are forced to escape this persecution in their countries of origin and make claims for refugee status on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Turkey is increasingly a crossroads for mixed migration flows from Asia and Africa to Europe, and has seen a rise in the numbers of LGBT asylum seekers in recent years. Many arrive in Turkey to confront new violence and harassment by local communities and other refugees. While awaiting the determination of their refugee status, they avoid the police, are afraid to leave their homes, and have very limited access to social support, employment, and medical care. Expedited resettlement is one short-term solution to the security concerns facing this group. Longer-term solutions include training government agencies and social service providers on basic concepts regarding LGBT status and the rights of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.

In Appellants S395/2002 and S396/2002 v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the High Court of Australia was the first ultimate appellate court to consider a claim for refugee status based upon sexual orientation. By majority the court rejected the notion prevalent in earlier cases that decision-makers could ‘expect’ refugee applicants to ‘co-operate in their own protection’ by concealing their sexuality. This paper explores the impact of S395 and S396 on the refugee jurisprudence of Australia and the United Kingdom five years on. Refugee decision-makers in both countries have been slow to fully appreciate the fact that sexual minorities are secretive about their sexuality and relationships as a result of oppressive social forces rather than by ‘choice’. In addition, in Australia there has been a clear shift away from discretion towards disbelief as the major area of contest, with a significant increase in decisions where the applicant’s claim to actually being gay, lesbian or bisexual is outright rejected. In an alarming number of cases tribunal members used highly stereotyped and Westernised notions of ‘gayness’ as a template against which the applicants were judged.

Providing interdisciplinary and empirically grounded insights into the issues surrounding gender and migration into and within Europe, this work presents a comprehensive and critical overview of the historical, legal, policy and cultural framework underpinning different types of European migration. Analysing the impact of migration on women’s careers, the impact of migration on family life and gender perspectives on forced migration, the authors also examine the consequences of EU enlargement for women’s migration opportunities and practices, as well as the impact of new regulatory mechanisms at EU level in addressing issues of forced migration and cross-national family breakdown. Recent interdisciplinary research also offers a new insight into the issue of skilled migration and the gendering of previously male-dominated sectors of the labour market.

This article draws upon psychological and sociological literature to explore the issues that arise in eliciting and presenting a refugee narrative when the claim is based upon sexual orientation. Rigid notions of homosexual identity may consciously or subconsciously shape decision-makers’ approaches in this field. First, we identify psycho-social issues of particular significance to lesbian, gay and bisexual claimants which may act as barriers to eliciting their narrative of self-identity, including: a reluctance to reveal group membership as the basis of a claim, the experience of passing or concealment strategies, the impact of shame and depression on memory, common experience of sexual assault, and sexualization of the identity narrative in the legal process. Secondly, we explore factors which inhibit the reception of such narratives in the legal process. In particular we explore the psychological ‘stage model’ of sexual identity development and examine the pervasive impact this model has had upon decision-makers’ ‘pre-understanding’ of sexual identity development as a uniform and linear trajectory.