Sogica - Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum

11/10/2026

Huge congratulations to Claire Fletcher for her new book, now out on open access with Emerald Publishing: ‘Q***rly Faithful: Q***r People’s Experience of Religion in Asylum Seeking’.

Description

An assumption present in refugee status determinations is that there is an incompatibility of religious faith and q***r subjectivity. Q***rly Faithful considers religious experiences throughout the lives of q***r people who seek asylum to show the complexity of q***r people’s lives in country of origin, the legal asylum process and rebuilding lives in host countries. How do q***r people experience religion before and after arrival into the UK to claim asylum?

Providing new empirical data in an under researched area, Fletcher examines the nexus of q***r subjectivity, religion and asylum seeking, highlighting life history interviews with q***r people seeking asylum and with those who respond to them, either in a faith-based context, legal provision, or NGO responses. By exploring three key areas country-of-origin (CoO) experience, the intersection of the legal and social in the UK asylum context, and religious responses in the UK to those who are forced to flee due to q***r subjectivity Fletcher shows how the stereotypical assumption that faith and q***r subjectivity are not compatible is not only incorrect but can limit people’s ability to gain refugee protection. Challenging dominant narratives of a homogenously homophobic global south by demonstrating the complexity of strategies interlocutors employ to remain in CoO, the research also shows how religious responses can provide help and healing for LGBTQI+ people who seek asylum in the UK.

Making recommendations on how faith spaces can become more visibly welcoming to those with q***r subjectivities who are within the asylum process, this is important reading for academics and students in the sub-disciplines of forced migration studies, sexuality studies, sociology of religion and q***r feminist theory.

https://www.sogica.org/database/fletcher-q***rly-faithful-2026/

24/09/2026

Excellent addition to the SOGICA database, don't miss this piece by Diego García Rodríguez and Leah Russon Watkins, entitled ‘”Other than in the hotel, I feel safe almost everywhere”: Hotelized containment, governable (in)visibility and LGBTIQ+ survival in UK asylum hotels’, out in Migration Studies, Volume 14, Issue 4, December 2026

Abstract

Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with LGBTIQ+ people seeking asylum in England and Scotland, this article explores the role of asylum hotels as sites of governance in the United Kingdom using two connected concepts. Firstly, we use the term ‘hotelized containment’ to explain how hotels are repurposed into quasi-institutional spaces of enforced waiting, everyday control, precarity, managed dependency, and limited autonomy. Secondly, we introduce the notion of ‘governable (in)visibility’ to explain how LGBTIQ+ residents can simultaneously be hyper-visible to the state and accommodation providers while being compelled to conceal their identities in their everyday communal lives. We argue that accommodation is not incidental to LGBTIQ+ asylum governance but constitutive of it by showing how asylum hotels can generate exposure to institutional disbelief and reactive safeguarding. Using q***r necropolitics as an interpretive lens, our findings illustrate how avoidable harm becomes normalized within the ordinary operation of asylum hotel life for LGBTIQ+ residents.

https://www.sogica.org/database/garcia-rodriguez-and-watkins-other-than-in-the-hotel-i-feel-safe-almost-everywhere-2026/

17/09/2026

GenSeM Mig Dialogue - Q***r and Trans Lives across East Africa

Displaced From, Displaced Within: Q***r and Trans Lives Across East...

14/09/2026

A very welcome contribution by Ester Serra Mingot on ‘Transforming Destinations: The Impact of Integration Interventions on the Mobility Decisions of Displaced LGBTIQ+ Persons in Mexico’, Migraciones. Publicación Del Instituto Universitario De Estudios Sobre Migraciones, 67, 1-26. Congratulations, Ester!

Abstract

This article explores the lived experiences of LGBTIQ+ forcibly displaced persons in (transit through) Mexico, examining how they decide whether to stay or move on, and how civil society organizations (CSOs) shape those decisions. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, this article analyzes three intertwined dimensions: the specific vulnerabilities shaping LGBTIQ+ migration; the role of CSOs in reshaping agency and future planning; and Mexico’s evolving role in the regional migration landscape. The article critiques deterrence-based migration governance and highlights the emotional and bureaucratic complexities LGBTIQ+ migrants face, caught between transnational border regimes and local systemic violence. Conceptually, it challenges traditional ideas of destination, intention, and agency in migration trajectories, framing Mexico as a site of “forced immobility,” where decisions emerge from structural coercion, not choice. The article challenges linear migration models and calls for inclusive, person-centered integration efforts rooted in resilience and belonging rather than deterrence.

Keywords: LGBTIQ+ displaced persons, transit migration, integration, Mexico, country of forced immobility

https://www.sogica.org/database/serra-mingot-transforming-destinations-2025/

14/09/2026

And here's another contribution to in the Canadian context: Natalie Kouri-Towe, ‘Theorizing Q***r Kinship and the Normative Family in the Canadian Sponsorship of Syrian Refugees’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2026 - congratulations to Natalie!

Abstract

Canada’s refugee sponsorship initiative gained international attention following the federal government’s 2015 plan to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada through a combination of government and private sponsorship. The paper draws on media coverage of Syrian refugee sponsorship to examine how discourses around family and kinship in Canada’s sponsorship program risk constraining the pre- and post-resettlement lives of Syrian refugees. Beyond the humanitarian lens, the paper draws on human-interest stories to identify the ruptures and emergences in the language of kinship at play in broader narratives and structures impacting Syrian refugees. Using critiques of heteronormativity emergent in feminist and q***r geography, the paper asks how kinship and family are deployed, contested, and shaped in discourses around refugee sponsorship. Juxtaposing the normalization of “family” in tension with non-nuclear forms of kinship, such as extended kin networks and polygamous families, this work draws on q***r theories of kinship to question how gender, sexuality, and familial structures are imagined and reconfigured by governments, refugees, and sponsors in the context of resettlement.

https://www.sogica.org/database/kouri-towe-theorizing-q***r-kinship-and-the-normative-family-in-the-canadian-sponsorship-of-syrian-refugees-2026/

14/09/2026

Fresh addition to the SOGICA database, this time by Xu, A., Kinitz, D.J., Yanar, B. et al., ‘How precariously employed gay, bisexual, and q***r immigrant and refugee men in Toronto make meaning of work, health, and wellbeing’, Scientific Reports, 2026
- congratulations to the authors!

Abstract
Le***an, gay, bisexual, transgender, and q***r (LGBTQ+) people experience mental health and trauma outcomes as a result of systemic exclusion from the labour market in Canada, with less known about intersectional labour precarity for LGBTQ+ immigrants. How LGBTQ+ immigrants experiencing intersectional precarity appraise work, health, and wellbeing challenges is unknown. Drawing from 13 interviews conducted in 2021 and utilizing Park’s meaning making model as a framework, this qualitative study focuses on gay, bisexual, and q***r immigrant and refugee men experiencing precarious employment in Toronto, Canada, to ask the following question: how do participants make meaning of their work, health, and wellbeing experiences? Participants were primarily highly educated and commonly arrived in Canada on refugee status or immigrated to live without persecution of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we identified two meanings made from participant narratives: ambivalence towards the presumed superiority of the standard employment relationship and valuing the possibility of leveraging precarious work. Implications of our findings include the risk of meaning making loops without situational change or intervention and the opportunity for collaboration between social service and healthcare professionals working with populations made vulnerable through intersecting systems of marginalization.

Keywords: LGBTQ, Immigrants, Refugees, Precarious employment, Meaning making, Health

https://www.sogica.org/database/xu-and-others-how-precariously-employed-gay-bisexual-and-q***r-immigrant-and-refugee-men-in-toronto-make-meaning-of-work-health-and-wellbeing-2026/

14/09/2026

"Due to a barrage of Trump administration policies, opaque bi-lateral agreements, and executive orders, LGBTQI+ people at risk of persecution have been increasingly trapped in or sent to dangerous and life-threatening conditions. These actions systematically violate laws enacted by Congress to protect people fleeing persecution and treaties the United States has pledged to uphold."

Due to a barrage of Trump administration policies, opaque bi-lateral agreements, and executive orders, LGBTQI+ people at risk of persecution have been increasingly trapped in or sent to dangerous and life-threatening conditions. These actions systematically violate laws enacted by Congress to protec...

14/09/2026

Interesting piece by Syed Muhammad Ihsan Haider, on ‘Performing Truth: The Epistemic Paradox of Q***r Asylum’, out in the Refugee Law Initiative blog. Congrats, Syed, and happy reading, Everyone!

Excerpt

In April 2026, a BBC investigation carried out undercover revealed a scenario which surprised many, even though it should have been foreseeable. Various immigration advisers in the UK instructed migrants to appear gay when applying for asylum. These advisers told them which clubs to go to for photographs, how to prepare a script about a same-sex relationship, and what story to tell in interviews. The Home Office did call this an abuse of the system, and that was correct. However, the more alarming question is as to how the system permitted such behavior to occur so easily. This article contends that the problem does not lie in the dishonesty of the applicants but in the way in which sexual orientation and Gender identity (SOGI) asylum claims are evaluated. The mechanisms intended to detect fraud are in fact facilitating the fraud. It is worth noting that the BBC’s report was contested from different parts of the sector, with some flagging it as the overstatement of the problem. Whether or not one accepts the view, the structural question it surfaces warrants some serious attention.

https://www.sogica.org/database/haider-performing-truth-the-epistemic-paradox-of-q***r-asylum-2026/

11/09/2026

Fresh addition to the SOGICA database, this time by Florent Chossière, ‘Faire face aux persécutions et partir : les ressorts de la migration d’exilé·es LGBT+ ayant demandé l’asile en France’ [‘Facing Persecution and Leaving: the Drivers of Migration among LGBT+ Asylum Seekers in France’] Espace populations sociétés, 2025/3-2026/1, 2026 - congratulations on this important contribution, Florent!

Résumé

Depuis une vingtaine d’années, les réfugié·es LGBT+ ont fait l’objet d’une attention institutionnelle et académiques croissante, ayant notamment conduit à analyser leur réception au sein du système d’asile des pays occidentaux. Toutefois, les configurations particulières de leur migration restent encore peu connues. L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en lumière les ressorts multiples de la migration de personnes ayant demandé l’asile en France au motif de persécutions liées à l’orientation se****le ou à l’identité de genre. En s’appuyant sur une enquête ethnographique menée en région parisienne et sur des entretiens, l’article invite à aller au-delà d’une explication de la migration qui s’en tiendrait à une simple causalité mécanique générée par les expériences de persécutions. En dépliant les processus qui expliquent quand, pourquoi et comment la migration devient une solution envisagée et réalisable pour réagir aux persécutions, le texte montre la nécessité de réinsérer les expériences de persécutions dans un faisceau plus large de facteurs pour comprendre la mise en mouvement et de mettre en perspective cette articulation à l’aune des trajectoires biographiques et des positions sociales des individus. Ce faisant, l’article permet également de souligner l’hétérogénéité des parcours et les inégalités qui se jouent dans la négociation des persécutions et l’accès à la migration.

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, LGBT+ refugees have attracted increasing institutional and academic attention, leading in particular to analyses of how they are received within the asylum systems of Western countries. However, the specific configurations of their migration trajectories have been less studied. The aim of this article is to shed light on the multiple drivers of migration among individuals who have applied for asylum in France on the grounds of persecution related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in the Parisian area and on in-depth interviews, the article goes beyond explanations of migration that reduce it to a simple mechanical causality arising from experiences of persecution. By unpacking the processes that explain when, why, and how migration becomes a conceivable and achievable solution in response to persecution, the article highlights the need to reinsert experiences of persecution into a broader set of factors in order to understand mobility, and to situate this articulation in relation to individuals’ biographical trajectories and social locations. In doing so, the article also highlights the heterogeneity of migration pathways and the inequalities at play in the negotiation of persecution and access to migration.

Mots-clés: migration, exil, réfugiés, LGBT+, genre, sexualité, inégalités, trajectoires
Keywords: migration, exile, refugees, LGBT+, gender, sexuality, inequalities, trajectories

https://www.sogica.org/database/chossiere-faire-face-aux-persecutions-et-partir-2026/

09/09/2026

🌈 For 🇲🇹, we are highlighting EUAA’s resources which help address the specific needs of LGBTIQ+ applicants.

A recently published factsheet on jurisprudence related to LGBTIQ applicants in international protection, highlights current trends and evolving case law identified between January 2025 and August 2026.

The factsheet examines case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights and national courts across EU+ countries.

Some key points in the factsheet:
🔷 Criminalisation of same-sex relations remains an important indicator of the risk of persecution, particularly where it is combined with violence, discrimination, arbitrary enforcement, or ineffective state protection.
🔷 Even where same-sex relations are not explicitly criminalised, other legal provisions may be used to arrest or target LGBTIQ persons.
🔷 Sexual orientation and gender identity should not be assessed in isolation, but in conjunction with other relevant factors, such as political opinion, health status, and social and economic exclusion.
🔷 Transgender persons may face forms and levels of discrimination, violence and social exclusion that differ fundamentally from those experienced by homosexual individuals in the country of origin.
🔷 Persecution related to sexual orientation or gender identity can extend also to those perceived as belonging to the LGBTIQ community or those advocating for LGBTIQ rights.

💻 Find out more: https://www.euaa.europa.eu/publications/jurisprudence-related-lgbtiq-applicants-international-protection