Rethinking SOGI Asylum: Queer Migration Beyond Persecution Narratives

SOGI asylum has received increasing political and academic attention. Focusing on refugee status determination, academics have emphasized how normative representations of sexual and gender minorities in Northern asylum institutions lead to the exclusion of many SOGI asylum applicants. To broaden the understanding of queer people’s lived experiences of forced migration and asylum, in one to-be-published article, Florent shifts attention to what happens just before the asylum examination, namely the fact of applying for SOGI asylum itself. Based on three years’ ethnographic fieldwork, this research investigates how queer exiles come to apply for SOGI asylum in France. By emphasizing the variety of factors, besides their experiences of persecution, leading them to apply for SOGI asylum, this paper decompartmentalizes asylum from below, denaturalizing the category of LGBT+ refugees by reinserting asylum application into more general and diversified individual experiences of migration. Doing so, it also counters liberationist and humanitarian narratives associated to SOGI asylum seekers.

Florent will present his research, followed by a Q+A session. At 17:00, all attendees are invited to join a borrel in CREA. To register, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/mS7cvhUUEpdvhmkW6. 

Organiser