Abstract
The past two decades has witnessed growing sociological and legal attention given to the plight of queer migrants seeking asylum in Europe. Such attention has sought to produce queer migrants as visibly transparent subjects within public discourses. However, this has often demanded queer migrants adhere to certain norms surrounding sexuality, gender, and race, at least if they desire intelligibility—not only within asylum regimes but the broader public too. My research takes another approach by focusing on the haunting aspects of queer migration. Whereas most sociological and legal analysis seeks to learn more about queer migration and the lives of queer migrants, I engage with what remains absent in such narratives by focusing on cultural production. By exploring how absences become present within cultural production, I suggest a haunting takes place that raises colonial legacies surrounding the material experiences and demanded subjectivities of queer migrants. This paper seeks to lay out my theoretical and methodological approach to understanding the haunting presence of queer migrants in contemporary Europe. Drawing links between performance studies and sociology, I argue cultural production has the means to open up the political imaginary surrounding queer migration. Cultural production plays the dual role of challenging the violence experienced by queer migrants upon arrival in Europe and the necessity of queer migrants needing to perform as vulnerable subjects within discourses of humanitarianism. Yet more than this, cultural production does not always rely on making queer migrants familiar but instead has shown to advocate for their right to opacity.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—At the Crossroads of Paradigms: Considering Heterodoxy in the Social Sciences
KEYWORDS
Queer, Migration, Asylum, Haunting, Opacity
