The (not so) Straight Story: Queering Migration Narratives of Sexual and Gendered Orientation Refugee Claimants in Toronto.

David AB Murray, Department of Anthropology and Program in Sexuality Studies, York University, Toronto

Canadian media coverage of sexual orientation and gendered identity (SOGI) refugees presents a relatively uniform story of these queer newcomers, who are often quoted describing their countries of origin as highly homo- or transphobic, and full of discrimination, danger and violence, such that they have no choice but to escape and ‘seek haven’ in Canada (Jiminez 2004), a nation that is ‘gloriously free’ (Sinclair 2005). While LGBT media have identified problems in some Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decisions, the hegemonic narrative remains one of ‘migration to liberation nation’, in which a clearly identified ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ ‘transgendered’ and sometimes ‘bisexual’ individual, mostly (but not always) from a Global South nation, seeks refuge and citizenship in Canada, identified as a nation which legally protects and guarantees freedom based on sexual orientation or gendered identity. Not coincidentally, a similar narrative is found in the SOGI narratives submitted to the IRB adjudicators. In this paper I argue that this hegemonic narrative is produced in relation to particular socio-cultural juridical-legal definitions and categories which are themselves historically produced in and through the bureaucratic machinery of the state, human rights organizations and legal scholarship. The effect of this model narrative is to reinscribe what Ahmed (2010) calls the ‘happy migrant’, that is, someone who espouses national ideals which are couched in terms of empire, the new twist being that sexual diversity is now held aloft as justification of empire’s liberation from abjection. Based on interviews and time spent with SOGI refugee claimants in Toronto, I argue for a more complex rendering of stories of movement that queers the ‘straight/forward’ orientation of the hegemonic narrative and its key characters, the ‘barbaric’ country of origin, the ‘victimized’ refugee, and the ‘liberating’ destination nation.

Drawing on theoretical interests in culture, nationalism, colonialism, performance, gender and sexuality, Professor David Murray has conducted fieldwork in the Caribbean, New Zealand and Canada that examines the processes and politics of identity making projects and their relations to local, national and transnational political and economic forces. He is the author of "Opacity: Gender, Sexuality, Race and the Problem of Identity in Martinique", Peter Lang Press 2002, "Homophobias: Lust and Loathing Across Time and Space", Duke University Press, 2009 and "Flaming Souls: Homosexuality, Homophobia and Social Change in Barbados", University of Toronto Press, 2012. This paper is part of a new project examining the experiences of 'queer refugees' with the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and Canadian queer urban communities.

Monday 15 April 2013, 12.00-1.00 pm, Room 104
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS),
La Trobe University, 215 Franklin Street, Melbourne
Tel: +61 3 9285 5382
To be added to the seminars email list, contact: arcshs@latrobe.edu.au