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feminists@law, Vol 7, No 1 (2017)


Queering Asylum Anxieties: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugee Claims

Senthorun Raj* 


This is an audio recording of a paper given at the Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference, Newcastle University, 5-7 April 2017. Over  the last three decades, an increasing number of Anglophone courts have  recognised asylum claims on the basis of sexual orientation and gender  identity. Such jurisprudence has been heralded for “progressing” LGBTI rights.  Yet, the progressive promise of these “pro-LGBTI” decisions leaves much more to  be desired. Often formulated under the rubric of a “particular social group,”  the extent to which queer refugees have been granted protection has been  contingent on whether they subscribe to normative ideas of intimacy, identity,  and injury. Specifically, queer refugees must demonstrate they have a  “well-founded fear of persecution” by subscribing to ethnocentric assumptions  about sexual citizenship, gender expression, erotic relationships, and state  violence. While the concept of fear has been central to the grant of asylum  under international law, it has also been mobilised in legal, political, and  academic responses to the adjudication of such claims. Specifically, the fear  about having a refugee jurisprudence that is too queer has led to states  attempting to curb opening the proverbial “floodgates.” This anxious attempt at  control has been painfully fleshed out in the way courts navigate the nexus  between “authenticating” immutable sexual or gender identities and “counting”  what amounts to sustained state persecution. Drawing on appellate case law from  Australia, UK, US, and the EU, my paper will disturb how fear stifles the  recognition of queer identity, intimacy, and injury. By disrupting judicial  gestures, I will consider how “asylum anxieties” continue to undermine queer  claims for protection.



* Lecturer in Law, Keele University, UK. s.raj@keele.ac.uk 

