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Lesbische, bisexuelle, trans, queere und intergeschlechtliche (LBTQI) Migrantinnen, Asylsuchende und Flüchtende sind besonders anfällig für sexualisierte und physische Gewalt – auf ihrem Weg nach Europa, während des Asylverfahrens und nachdem ihnen der Flüchtlings- oder humanitäre Status in der Europäischen Union zuerkannt wurde. Dabei handelt es sich unter anderem um Vergewaltigung und sexualisierte Gewalt in Flüchtlingslagern, Auffanglagern und beim Transit, um sogenannte „Ehrenverbrechen“, Ausbeutung als Sexarbeiter*innen durch Menschenhändler und Einschüchterung durch Behördenmitarbeiter*innen und die Gesellschaft insgesamt.

Housing policies for refugees are a hot topic in many countries receiving refugees. However, most discussions tend to treat refugees monolithically despite the fact that they have diverse experiences. Individuals seeking asylum on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity face numerous obstacles during the asylum process. This article aims to explore how asylum accommodations are governed and how this process affects queer asylum seekers. Based on a range of sources, including interviews, documents and media articles, the results show that many queer asylum seekers have been victims of homo- and transphobic violence. The findings also indicate that the Swedish migration agency has implemented temporary solutions to mitigate such violence but refused to change the overall policy. In the analysis, I maintain that there are three underlying assumptions in the system, namely, the primacy of heteronormativity, the metropolitan nature of queers, and the need to adjust but not challenge heteronormativity. I argue that this process renders queer asylum seekers unfit and leaves them in unsafe housing situations to domesticise them in the context of a heteronormative society, i.e. a society in which they do not stand out or claim further rights.

This third edition of the Trans Legal Mapping Report represents a departure from the earlier versions in 2016 and 2017. While we continue to research legal gender recognition, we have now added criminalisation examples to countries where information is available – both through desk-based research and a combination of desk-based research and verification by trans activists in those countries. The decision to add criminalisation is a political one, as well as one borne out of necessity. We know anecdotally that trans people, especially trans women, are disproportionately targeted by institutions of authority in almost every country in the world, and one method of such targeting is the use of laws, arrest and detention. That is why, in this edition, when examples of such targeting has taken place, we have classified them as either “de facto” or “de jure” criminalisation. This is to indicate the impact of the discrimination on trans persons – that the systemic targeting of trans people using seemingly innocuous laws such as those related to public spaces, is just as damaging as so-called “cross dressing” laws which overtly target gender expressions.

The Covid-19 pandemic clearly reveals the vulnerability of LGBTQI+ persons seeking asylum and refuge within the Common European Asylum System and as applied in Germany. The German government recognizes that the call to “stay home and save lives” potentially puts at risk vulnerable groups (i.e. women, children, elderly etc.) and increases isolation. However, people seeking asylum find themselves in cramped accommodation with less access to community and with increased instances of violence and trauma. In most federal states, legal services offered by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) have been temporarily suspended. A particularly vulnerable group within the category of asylum claimants in Germany are lesbian, gay, bi- and transsexual, gender non-binary and intersex people seeking asylum who often experience loneliness and abuse in reception and accommodation camps due to homo/trans-phobia. The continuing pandemic substantially exacerbates the social isolation they were already facing and poses specific challenges in regard to accommodation, healthcare, access to community, trauma and isolation, and (sexual) violence.

Die Covid-19-Pandemie legt offen, dass LSBTIQ+ Geflüchtete innerhalb des Europäischen Asylsystems und seiner Umsetzung in Deutschland eine besonders schutzbedürftige Gruppe darstellen. Die Bundesregierung erkennt an, dass die Forderung, soziale Distanz zu wahren und zu Hause zu bleiben, für schutzbedürftige Gruppen (z.B. Frauen, Kinder und ältere Menschen) eine besondere Gefährdung darstellen kann. Dennoch finden sich Geflüchtete meist in überfüllten Ankunftszentren und Flüchtlingsunterkünften wieder, in denen sich Gewalt und re-traumatisierende Ereignisse häufen und die ihre soziale Isolation fördern. Zudem wurden in den meisten Bundesländern die vom Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF) angebotenen Rechtsdienstleistungen aufgrund der Pandemie vorübergehend eingestellt. Eine besonders vulnerable Gruppe von Geflüchteten sind lesbische, schwule, bisexuelle, trans*, non-binäre, inter* und queere Menschen, die in den Unterkünften oft Formen von LSBTIQ+ Feindlichkeit wie sozialer Ächtung und Gewalt ausgesetzt sind. Die derzeitigen Maßnahmen zur Eingrenzung der Covid-19-Pandemie verstärken diese Tendenzen und führen zu besonderen Herausforderungen in Bezug auf die Gewährleistung einer sicheren Unterkunft, Gesundheitsversorgung und sozialer Kontakte, sowie der Vermeidung von Traumata, Isolation sowie (sexuelle) Gewalt.

In this article, the author foregrounds transgender as a useful category of analysis to shed light on the issue of gender variance and its articulations within the encounter between Syrian queer and gender-variant refugees and the humanitarian-asylum complex. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Syrian queer and gender-variant refugees in Istanbul in 2014 and 2015, this article contends that transgender as a term first circulates among the queer and gender-variant circles as a thinkable possibility primarily through its function as a humanitarian category, especially as propagated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). By highlighting this specific encounter, the author attempts to demonstrate, however, that rather than focusing on what the term does to the persons it interpellates, one must map out and document the ways the term is taken up and negotiated by the Syrian queer and gender-variant populations themselves, a method that could help ameliorate the negativity attached to transgender as a Western term and show that other systems of identification and histories of gender variance in the Syrian or Syrian diasporic contexts do not simply disappear or are subsumed by transgender, but are further complicated by it and continue to exist alongside it.

While many refugees have settled in Germany within recent years, little is known about LGBTQ* (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer*) refugees, a potentially vulnerable group. This qualitative study investigated LGBTQ* refugees’ experiences of distal and proximal minority stressors as well as their mental health burdens during the post-migration period.

The European Union accepted more than one million refugees from Muslim-majority countries in 2015. However, Islamophobic social conditions have created numerous hardships as they attempt to integrate into European society. This situation may be especially challenging for refugees identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). They not only experience discrimination from multiple sources but also lack connections with their diaspora communities. This qualitative study examined the experiences of LGBTQ refugees who migrated from Islamic societies to Austria (n= 19) and the Netherlands (n= 19). We conducted semi-structured interviews to understand how they experienced integration. Additionally, we interviewed five LGBTQ refugee service providers to triangulate data and enrich findings. We identified the following themes: precarious livelihoods, the complexity of depending on others, still not free, and you’re Muslim; we don’t want you. Findings indicated that participants experienced uncertainty regarding the asylum process, including issues related to the Dublin Regulation. Although participants relied on host community members to ease integration, they also encountered discrimination based on race, religion, and immigration status. In Vienna, this discrimination was experienced as overt, whereas in Amsterdam, it was subtler. Participants also encountered discrimination based on their sexual and gender identity from other refugees, compromising their ability to receive services needed to facilitate integration. The article concludes with recommendations for promoting the integration of LGBTQ refugees into the European Union.

In Europe asylum seekers are confronted with migration-filtering techniques when beginning their rights claiming procedures, during the decision-making process of their asylum claims, and finally across the procedural constraints imposed on them. In this article, I want to look at asylum through a focus on newly recognised refugee protection categories: sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). In so doing, I concentrate on the ordinary, yet effective, manifestations of the filtering devices inherent in the politics of asylum by examining the elusiveness of current migration control practices. I aim to elaborate on the discrepancy between the widening of refugee protection, through the inclusion of gender identity and sexual orientation as grounds of asylum, and the increasingly restrictive practices that define the refugee granting process in France and the UK. The analytical considerations in the article emerge from interviewing and conducting ethnography over a three-year period between London, Paris and Marseille with gender and sexual minority refugees, immigration lawyers and refugee support workers and volunteers. The article seeks to sociologically investigate the claim of ‘asylum as filtering device’ within two western European national settings.