The Protection Paradox: LGBTQ Asylum Seekers and Humanitarian Logics

By Alex Nelson

Protection confers a loss of agency. Such a premise encapsulates the impacts of gendered discourses on asylum seekers within humanitarian systems. Configured around the question of “deservingness,” these constructs determine whether migrants are deemed worthy of receiving aid. Whether this entails stereotypical representations of the dangerously agentic male claimant or the passive female in need of assistance, gender/sexual binaries enter these decision-making processes. LGBTQ migrants, on the other hand, inherently resist such stable categories by virtue of their non-conforming identities. With this theme in mind, the following paper draws from the narratives of queer asylees to elucidate the conditional nature of protection. Shedding light onto these accounts destabilizes the humanitarian logics that govern the expression of human agency.  

Before delving into an LGBTQ context, it remains imperative to understand how binary thinking frames the concept of deservingness. In the context of hegemonic attitudes towards migrants, these delineations function as “moral distinctions between those who deserve compassion and those who do not” (Ticktin, 2016). Agentic terms are projected onto subjects of such categorizations to either undermine or validate claims to compassion – and by extension, protection. In Illegal Traveler, Shahram Khosravi demonstrates how xenophobic rhetoric is deeply gendered. Reflecting on his own journey as a migrant, he explains that a “…Muslim man is also seen as endangering the passive Muslim woman, who is a victim needing to be saved. Such stereotyping may explain why Switzerland allows five times more female than male Muslim asylum seekers to remain for humanitarian reasons” (Holzer, Schneider and Widmer 2000, cited in Noll and Aleksandra 2006). Here, Islamophobic and gendered assumptions undergird these narratives. The male figure is perceived as a threat, which implies agency. On the contrary, a woman of the same religious group is deemed hopelessly vulnerable and thus deserves protection.  

In this vein, it remains imperative to understand how gendered constructs manifest within policy. Masculinity, for example, can warrant criminalization due to the overarching notion that men are “dangerously agentive” (Griffiths, 2015). In her article on the racialized and gendered undercurrents within the deportation of Mexican migrants, Sotelo notes that "criminal" and "fugitive" alien are labels that are gendered male, in contrast to "illegal alien," which at times has referred to women, and at other times to men. (Sotelo, 2013). These distinctions warrant both the exclusive and carceral policies that often target masculine individuals. Femininity, on the other hand, can merit protection instead of punitive measures. As figures that are emblematic of vulnerability, “women have become the archetypal and preferred recipients of aid” (Ticktin, 2011). This is not to say that the policies behind these labels are mutually exclusive. By virtue of their assumed lack of agency, female migrants are also subject to punitive forms of compassion. Stacey Vanderhurst, for instance, demonstrates how Nigerian women within anti-trafficking rehabilitation programs are coerced into undergoing personal development projects aimed at discouraging future migration. Prepuaremptively positioned as victims who “are complicit in being trafficked,” their vulnerability serves to justify initiatives spearheaded by the state itself (Vanderhurst, 2022). In other words, a presumed incapacity to exercise agency is leveraged as evidence that these women need protection.  

Protective logics are also employed in the context of LGBTQ asylees. Instead of drawing from the figure of the intrinsically passive migrant to “save them from themselves,” humanitarian and governmental systems often utilize the factor of identity to advocate for their clients (Vanderhurst, 2022). Since the expression of queerness is often related to the vulnerabilities experienced by this category of asylum seekers, such a paradigm bolsters imperatives to “rescue” them from the oppressive morays of the Global South. Moreover, “Homonormative Nationalist” narratives also exemplify cases as proof that US policies towards LGBTQ citizens differ from those exhibited in less tolerant nations (Puar, 2007). Amidst frameworks like this, claimants must present their identities to fit within specific ideological constructs. Siobhan McGuirk illustrates how state apparatuses “…. feminize LGBT asylum seekers, and in particular gay men… who are often seen as lacking credibility if they do not display suitably effeminate vulnerabilities” (Johnson 2007; Kimmel and Llewellyn). Such a dynamic reveals the multiple hoops that one must jump through to demonstrate the strength of their claims. In some spaces, racial and socioeconomic requirements intersect with gendered assumptions. Homonormative ideals, for instance, reveal an intent to sift through clients to identify “an out, white, middle-class, and productive citizenry” (McGuirk, 2018). With these narrowly defined conditions determining the outcomes of many cases, clients present themselves in a certain light to meet these expectations. Even beyond the context of feminine and masculine constructions, the ontology of homosexuality serves as a reference point within humanitarian settings. In this vein, the lived experiences of lesbian asylum seekers demonstrate that abiding by these standards proves difficult. As Loes Verhaegue argues, this population of asylees is “…only protected to the extent that their testimony is in sync with the European conceptualization of what it means to be gay” (Verhaegue, 2023). Put differently, interpretations of one’s sexuality must be unchanging, structured according to a linear trajectory, and reflect inner turmoil (Verhaegue, 2023).  

To enter these spaces of expectation that few can ever hope to occupy, one must forgo a personal sense of agency. Debanuj Dasgupta’s work concerning Tara’s Crossing certainly reflects this tendency. While the play itself concerns a transgender woman in detention while waiting for the results of her asylum case, her narrative can be broadened to include other identities and situations. At one point, the author mentions how Tara’s character “…is required to script her life and identity according to the demands of the law” (Dasgupta, 2019). This premise encapsulates the effects of protection paradigms, as many asylees' stories are configured around institutional objectives. The denial of a person’s fluid sense of sexuality highlights this dynamic. Interactions with bisexual clients reflect attempts to seek out alternative explanations for opposite sex relationships. Such cases are presented “…as products of cultural obligation, forced marriage, or individual attempts to ‘hide who they really were’” (McGuirk, 14). Claimants’ testimonies are instilled with narratives not of their own choosing. Paradoxically, the rationales behind these arguments conceal the aims and desires of their subjects by presenting facts not in evidence. And by engaging in these logics, asylum seekers also end up “enacting ‘scripts of refugeeness’ which do not alter the grammar of domination survived by the refugees, but rather reinscribe unequal geopolitical power relations” (Riveti, 2013: 306). These sorts of narratives inadvertently perpetuate the oppressive conditions that asylees are often seeking refuge from in the first place.  

Contradictorily, protective discourses also expose subjects to nuanced forms of vulnerability. Violations experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming individuals lay bare hidden forms of degradation within asylum processes. By having to constantly prove the validity of their identities through the act of embodiment itself, claimants endure “ontological violence” (Balaguera, 2023). Since the “transgender body cannot be read as legible within coercive systems of sexual difference,” adherence to a strict gender binary is even more enforced (Solomon, 2005). For instance, a trans woman whose physical appearance blurs this delineation would be disciplined into conforming to these standards. Once again, successfully exhibiting gendered characteristics grants certain privileges even as the system excludes   “… embodiments that are deemed less legitimate” (Balaguera, 1793). These parameters limit the different meanings that “transness” can assume on an individual level. In some cases, this mechanism can infringe on one’s relationship with their own identity. With bodily presentation governing the expression of agency, a basic form of personal autonomy is rendered vulnerable to attack. In a similar vein, this modality also breeds instances of physical violence. While in detention, policies towards transgender asylum seekers are often punitive. Martha Balaguera’s fieldwork illustrates this reality on a visceral level. Sent against her will to a cisgender male detention pod after being questioned about her “manly” appearance, Sheila’s experience exemplifies how state agents exploit transness. These personnel “inflict discretional punishment” to “ascribe and enforce” authorized identities (Balaguera, 2023). The conditional nature of protection thus makes it easier to take away rights (Galemba, 2023). Such paradigms only reproduce the vulnerabilities that they once sought to ameliorate.

Alex Nelson is a first year Human Rights MA student at the University of Denver who is interested in the intersections between gender justice and migrant rights. He hopes to eventually work for a non-governmental organization in New York City.