jenni millbank on queer applicants for asylum
I would like us to be able to talk about the ways in which a camp presentation is privileged as well as the ways in which it’s a source of oppression. moving beyond the binarist rhetoric of a privileged “straight-acting” queer population and the marginalised “visibly queer” (visible to whom?)
simultaneously — I would like us to to talk about the ways the “refugee” is constructed as male and straight. the definition of a refugee under international law is heavily slanted towards such experiences of persecution. if your persecution is coming from private individuals or organisations, not the state officially (as in most cases of women and queers fleeing interpersonal violence), or if you personally don’t hold an official role in a persecuted organisation (ie, if you are getting beat up not because you are in the opposition party but because your husband is, or because you’re carrying messages for the rebels, or any other indirect or low-status connection with a persecuted political group, of the kind that women are more likely to have), or if it’s hard for you to travel as a woman or child alone and you therefore don’t make it all the way to the shores of another country — it’s really fucking hard to get refugee status.
