Database

This article argues that the essays in the special issue on ‘Queer Migration, Asylum and Displacement’ collectively problematize how official identity categories trouble, and are troubled by, queer and asylum-seeking migrants. It discusses the future research and activist possibilities that these essays open up.

Using the ethnographic data from interviews with the Iranian queer and transgender refugee applicants in Turkey, the UNHCR, and NGOs in Istanbul, Ankara, Denizli, Kayseri, and Nevsehir, I explore the way that refugee rights as a temporally and spatially contingent concept normalizes queer and transgender refugee subjects, while managing the lives and deaths of different populations. Through examining the chronopolitics and geopolitics of rights within the refugee discourse, I point to inconsistencies in the universality of human rights and argue that while the designation of an act as “violation of human rights” committed by states or citizens, is arbitrary and contingent on the place and time of the act, the recognition of the refugee in the human rights regimes relies on essentialist and timeless notions of identity that travel in the teleological time of progress. The Iranian queer and trans refugees in Turkey are suspended in an in-between zone of recognition where rightfulness and rightlessness come together in a temporal standstill. The “protection” of trans and queer refugees under the rhetoric of rights in this in-between zone is tied to the management of life and death of populations through the politics of rightful killing.

URTEIL DES GERICHTSHOFS (Große Kammer)

2. Dezember 2014

„Vorlage zur Vorabentscheidung — Raum der Freiheit, der Sicherheit und des Rechts — Richtlinie 2004/83/EG — Mindestnormen für die Zuerkennung der Flüchtlingseigenschaft oder des subsidiären Schutzstatus — Art. 4 — Prüfung der Ereignisse und Umstände — Art und Weise der Prüfung — Zulassung bestimmter Beweise — Umfang der Befugnisse der zuständigen nationalen Behörden — Furcht vor Verfolgung wegen der sexuellen Ausrichtung — Unterschiede zwischen den Grenzen für die Prüfung der Aussagen und Unterlagen oder sonstigen Beweise zur behaupteten sexuellen Ausrichtung eines Asylbewerbers und den Grenzen für die Prüfung dieser Anhaltspunkte bei anderen Verfolgungsgründen — Richtlinie 2005/85/EG — Mindestnormen für Verfahren in den Mitgliedstaaten zur Zuerkennung und Aberkennung der Flüchtlingseigenschaft — Art. 13 — Anforderungen an die persönliche Anhörung — Charta der Grundrechte der Europäischen Union — Art. 1 — Würde des Menschen — Art. 7 — Achtung des Privat- und Familienlebens“

Individuals claiming persecution on the basis of gender or as sexual minorities have faced many obstacles in the political asylum process including additional burdens of proof of identity and of persecution. Based on our own work with political asylum applicants, on legal reports, and on reports by groups providing assistance to asylum seekers, we review the law and the obstacles and consider the conditions underlying and supporting suspicion of the applicants. We observe how particular narratives are rendered untellable in the interrogation process and how the identities of sexual minorities become either invisible or hypervisible.

This article describes patterns of interpretation and practice of same-sex desires pre- and post-migration among self-identified gay and bisexual Mexican immigrant men to the USA. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 80 such men, we argue that, contrary to stereotypes, their pre-migration interpretations and practices are considerably diverse and not solely informed by highly gendered understandings and styles of sexual interaction between men. After migration, some shift their interpretations and practices considerably, while others retain those that informed their sexualities pre-migration, either adapting them to their new sexual contexts or resisting any changes. These findings, which reveal the complexity and diversity of sexual interpretations among immigrant gay and bisexual men, pose a challenge to proposed systems of classifying same-sex desires as well as to conventional understandings of the impact of international migration on gay sexuality.

Diese Broschüre gibt Ihnen einen Überblick über Themen, die für die professionelle oder private Begegnung mit dieser spezifischen Gruppe Asylsuchender relevant sind. Die Rede ist hier von Asylsuchenden, die ihr Herkunftsland aufgrund von Homo- oder Transphobie verlassen haben und in der Schweiz um Schutz ersuchen, indem sie ein Asylgesuch stellen. Wir nennen diese Menschen LGBTI-Asylsuchende, das sind die Anfangsbuchstaben von Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex. Diese Informationsbroschüre richtet sich an ein breites Publikum: an die Nachtwache in der Asylunterkunft, an die Seelsorger_innen im Ausschaffungsgefängnis, an die JuristInnen der Rechts-beratungsstelle, an den Dolmetscher im psychiatrischen Ambulatorium, an die Sozialarbeitenden im Spital, an die Therapeutinnen, den Hilfswerkvertreter, an die Lehrer der Integrationsklassen, an die Zahnärztin im Empfangszentrum, an die BefragerInnen und EntscheiderInnen des Bundesamtes und Bundesverwaltungsgerichts, andere Behörden und Private, an Zugewandte und Skeptische und an alle anderen interessierten Menschen.

This special issue of Sexualities emerges in response to the growing visibility of LGBTQI immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers within global gay rights advocacy. Despite the increasing prominence of LGBTQI issues on the international human rights agenda, there has been relatively little discussion of the relationship between queer migration and LGBTQI human rights activism in the field of sexuality studies. This special issue seeks to bring queer migration and sexual citizenship studies into critical conversation with current literature in the area of gender, sexuality and human rights.

This article examines how gender, sexuality, race and class intersect in queer asylum claims to influence the perceived credibility of gay and lesbian asylum applicants. Building on recent scholarship in queer migration studies that considers the role of gender and sexuality in the social construction of migrant illegality, this article explores how practices of credibility assessment in the political asylum process produce women and sexual minorities as deportable subjects. As I argue, the tactics utilized by gay male asylum applicants to resist deportation show how practices of credibility assessment in the political asylum process are linked to the state’s reproduction of sexual citizenship narratives, narratives that have a disproportionately negative impact upon queer female migrants of color. Accounting for the intersections among gender, sexuality, race and class in influencing the perceived credibility of gay and lesbian asylum applicants is thus crucial for conceptualizing alternative forms of queer anti-deportation activism.

RICHTLINIE 2013/33/EU DES EUROPÄISCHEN PARLAMENTS UND DES RATES

vom 26. Juni 2013

zur Festlegung von Normen für die Aufnahme von Personen, die internationalen Schutz beantragen (Neufassung)