Stuck: Iranian LGBTQ Refugees in Turkey and the Sexuality of (Im)mobility
Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022 Public Lecture
Moving between asylum interviews, NGO offices, informal workplaces, and refugee protests and parties, this talk explores how North American countries’ tightening border policies, combined with Turkey’s strict control of refugees’ gender/sexuality, mobility, and labor, subject LGBTQ refugees to multiple forms of violence. It also examines how LGBTQ refugees respond to structures of stuckness and uncertainty by cultivating a queer ethics of love, care, support, and solidarity. They develop and uphold novel practices of self-making, kin-making, and community-making despite the ways in which the asylum system pits them against one another in competition for access to scarce resources.
Refuge, Asylum, Detention: A Feminist and Queer Lens
This panel explores how gender and sexuality shape refuge, asylum, and detention; how feminist and queer standpoints illuminate the structures that produce and sustain global apartheid; and how refugees and their allies resist these forces.