Crafting a queer migrant community. NGOs personnel's positioning in the “Samos LGBTQI+ Support Group”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2039-2281/20464Keywords:
queer, migration, NGOAbstract
The main aim of this paper is to analyse micropolitical dynamics activated in queer migrant people mutual-support groups run by NGOs. In particular, this article examines how humanitarian personnel picture, organise and experience LGBTQI+ migrant collectives. The selected fieldwork is the Samos LGBTQI+ collective as, in 2021, the first Closed Control Access Centre was inaugurated on the island. The centre is part of the identification and surveillance facilities located in the Aegean Sea. Such institutions are the cornerstone of the European Union’s migrant fluxes management strategy articulated in The New Pact on Migration and Asylum (COM - 609/2020). This article then examines humanitarian personnel’s perspective investigating “safe space”’s management, as well as the intersectional dynamics of power which characterise its gatherings, the very definition of queer community and group’s relationship with migration regime’s authorities.
References
ADAMSON, FIONA, 2012 Constructing the Diaspora: Diaspora Identity Politics and Transnational Social Movements, in MANDAVILLE P. – LYONS T., Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 25-42.
AGAMBEN, GIORGIO, 1998 Homo Sacer Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
AHLSTEDT, SARA, 2015 Doing ‘feelwork’: Reflections on whiteness and methodological challenges in research on queer partner migration, in ANDREASSEN, R. – VITUS, K., Affectivity and Race: Studies from Nordic Contexts, «Ashgate Publishing», Farnham, pp. 187-203.
AL-FAHAM, H. – DAVIS, A., M. – ERNST, R., 2019 Intersectionality: From Theory to Practise, «Annual Review of Law and Social Science», 15(1), pp. 247-265.
ALONSO BEJARANO, C. – LÓPEZ JUÁREZ, L. – MIJANGOS GARCÍA, M. A. – GOLDSTEIN, D. M., 2019 Decolonizing Ethnography. Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science, Duke University Press, Durham.
ANDERSON, BENEDICT, 2006 Imagined Communities, Second ed. London | Verso, New York.
AVRAMOPOULOU, ERIN, 2020 Decolonizing the Refugee Crisis: Palimpsestous Writing, Being-in-Waiting, and Spaces of Refuge on the Greek Island of Leros, «Journal of Modern Greek Studies», 38(2), pp. 533-562.
BOELLSTORFF, TOM, 2007 Queer Studies in the House of Anthropology, «Annual Review of Anthropology», 36(1), pp. 17-35.
BOELLSTORFF, TOM, 2015 Review. Graham, Mark: Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory, «Anthropos», 110(2), pp. 623-624.
BORGHI, RACHELE, 2020 Decolonialità e privilegio Pratiche femministe e critica al sistema-mondo, Meltemi, Milano.
BRUBAKER, R. – COOPER, F., 2000 Beyond "Identity", «Theory and Society», 29(1), pp. 1-47.
BUTLER, JUDITH, 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London.
CABOT, HEATH, 2011 Rendere un ‘rifugiato’ riconoscibile: performance, narrazione e intestualizzazione in una Ong ateniese, «Lares», 77(1), pp. 113-134.
CABOT, HEATH, 2013 The Social Aesthetics of Eligibility: NGO Aid and Indeterminacy in the Greek Asylum Process, «American Ethnologist», 3(40), pp. 452-466.
CARASTATHIS, ANNA, 2019 “Racism” versus “Intersectionality”? Significations of Interwoven Oppressions in Greek LGBTQ+ Discourses. Feminist Critique, «East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies», 11(26), pp. 1-22.
CESARO, SARA, 2021 The (micro-)politics of support for LGBT asylum seekers in France, in MOLE, R., Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe, University College London, London, pp. 216- 238.
DHAMOON, RITA K., 2011 Considerations on Mainstreaming Intersectionality, «Political Research Quarterly», 64(1), pp. 230-243.
DE JONG, SARA, 2017 Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women's Issues across North-South Divides, Oxford Academic, New York.
DUSTIN, M. – HELD, N., 2021 ‘They sent me to the mountain’: the role space, religion and support groups play for LGBTIQ˖ asylum claimants, in MOLE, R., Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe, UCL Press, London, pp. 184-215.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2015 COM (2015) 240. Available online at: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-09/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_en.pdf (Accessed on: 23rd November 2023)
EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2020 COM (2020) 609. Available online at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:85ff8b4f-ff13-11ea-b44f-01aa75ed71a1.0002.02/DOC_3&format=PDF (Accessed on: 23rd November 2023)
EUROPEAN COUNCIL, 2018 European Council meeting (28 June 2018) – Conclusions Brussels, 28 June 2018 (OR. en) EUCO 9/18 CO EUR 9 CONCL 3. Available online at: https://consilium.europa.eu/media/35936/28-euco-final-conclusions-en.pdf (Accessed on: 23rd November 2023).
FASSIN, DIDIER, 2011 Humanitarian Reason a Moral History of the Present times, University of California Press, Berkeley | Los Angeles | London.
FASSIN, ÉRIC, 2011 A Double- Edged Sword: Sexual Democracy, Gender Norms, and Racialized Rhetoric, in BUTLER, J. - WEED, E., The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 143-160.
FASSIN, É. – SALCEDO, M., 2015 Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity, «Archives of Sexual Behavior», 44(1), p. 1117–1125.
FISHER, WILLIAM F., 1997 Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices, «Annual Review of Anthropology», 26(1), pp. 439-464.
FORCED MIGRATION REVIEW, 2021 Mental health and psychosocial support, Data and displacement, Missing migrants, Vol. 66. Oxuniprint, Oxford.
FOUCAULT, MICHEL, 1978 The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, Pantheon Books, New York.
GIAMETTA, CALOGERO, 2017 The Sexual Politics of Asylum. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the UK Asylum System, Routledge, New York.
GIAMMETTA, CALOGERO, 2020 New asylum protection categories and elusive filtering devices: the case of ‘Queer asylum’ in France and the UK, «Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies», 46(1), pp. 142-157.
GRAHAM, MARK, 2014 Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory, Routledge, New York.
GREWAL, I. – BERNAL, V., 2014 Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, «Duke University Press», Durham, pp. 1-18.
HALPERIN, DAVID M., 1995 Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography, Oxford University Press, New York | Oxford.
HARAWAY, DONNA, 1988 Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, «Feminist Studies», 14 (3), pp. 575-599.
HARAWAY, DONNA, 1991 A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Free Association Books, London, pp. 149-182.
HELD, NINA, 2022 “As queer refugees, we are out of category, we do not belong to one, or the other”: LGBTIQ+ refugees’ experiences in “ambivalent” queer spaces, «Ethnic and Racial Studies», Volume Special Issue: Queer Liberalisms and Marginal Mobility, pp. 1-21.
HODŽIĆ, SAIDA, 2014 Feminist Bastards: Toward a Posthumanist Critique of NGOization, in BERNAL, V. - GREWAL, A. I., Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, «Duke University Press», Durham, pp. 221–247.
HONDAGNEU-SOTELO, PAUL, 1994 Gendered Transitions Mexican Experiences of Immigration, University of California Press, Berkeley.
JORDAN-ZACHERY, JULIA, 2006 Commentary: the practice and functioning of intersectionality and politics, «Journal of Women», Politics & Policy, 28(3-4), pp. 205-212.
LEE, EDWARD O. J., 2018 Tracing the Coloniality of Queer and Trans Migrations: Resituating Heterocisnormative Violence in the Global South and Encounters with Migrant Visa Ineligibility to Canada, Refuge, 34(1), pp. 60-74.
LEWIS, RACHEL, 2014 "Gay? Prove It": The Politics of Queer Anti-deportation Activism, «Sexualities», 17(8), pp. 958-975.
LIINASON, MIA, 2020 “Drawing the line” and other small scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs, «International Feminist Journal of Politics», 23(1), pp. 102–124.
LOGIE, C. H. – LACOMBE-DUNCAN, A. – LEE-FOON, N. – RYAN, S. – RAMSAY, H., 2016 “It’s for us –newcomers, lgbtq persons, and hiv-positive persons. You feel free to be”: a qualitative study exploring social support group participation among African and Caribbean lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender newcomers and refugees in Toronto, «BMC International Health and Human Rights», 16(18), pp. 1-10.
LUIBHÉID, EITHNE, 2008 Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship, «GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies», 14(2-3), pp. 169-190.
MAHLER, S. J. -PESSAR, P. R., 2006 Gender Matters: Ethnographers Bring Gender from the Periphery toward the Core of Migration Studies, «The International Migration Review», 40(1), pp. 27-63.
MALKKI, LIISA. H, 2015 The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism, Duke University Press, Durham | London.
MANALANSAN, MARTIN. F. IV, 2003 Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora, Duke University Press, Durham.
MANALANSAN, MARTIN. F. IV, 2006 Queer Intersections: Sexuality and Gender in Migration Studies, «The International Migration Review», 40(1), pp. 224-249.
MOLE, RICHARD, 2021 Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe, UCL Fringe, London.
MOORE, SALLY F., 1978 Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
ROBINSON, BRANDON A., 2016 Heteronormativity and Homonormativity, «The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies», pp. 1-3.
ROZAKOU, KATERINA, 2012 The Biopolitics of Hospitality in Greece: Humanitarianism and the Management of Refugees, «American Ethnologist», 39(3), pp. 562–577.
ROZAKOU, KATERINA, 2017 Non Recording the “European refugee crisis” in Greece: Navigating through irregular bureaucracy, «Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology», Volume 77, pp. 36-49.
SALEH, FADI, 2020 Queer/Humanitarian Visibility: The Emergence of the Figure of The 'Suffering Syrian Gay Refugee', «Middle East Critique», 20(1), pp. 47-67.
SAMPSON, S. – VANNIER, C. – LASHAW, A., 2017 Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
SANDRI, ELISA, 2018 "Volunteer Humanitarianism": volunteers and humanitarian aid in the Jungle refugee camp of Calais, «Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies», 44(1), pp. 65-80.
SHUMAN, A. – BOHMER, C., 2014 Gender and cultural silences in the political asylum process, «Sexualities», 17(8), pp. 939-957.
SUTTON-SMITH, BRIAN, 1997 The Ambiguity of Play, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
THEODOSSOPOULOS, DIMITRIOS, 2016 Philanthropy or solidarity? Ethical dilemmas about humanitarianism in crisis afflicted Greece, «Social Anthropology», 24(2), pp. 167-184.
THIELEMAN, K. - CACCIATORE, J., 2014 Witness to Suffering: Mindfulness and Compassion Fatigue among Traumatic Bereavement Volunteers and Professionals, «Social Work», 59(1), pp. 34-41.
TICKTIN, MIRIAM, 2014 Transnational Humanitarianism, «Annual Review of Anthropology», 43(1), pp. 273-289.
WESTON, KATH, 1993 Lesbian/Gay Studies in the House of Anthropology, «Annual Review of Anthropology», 22(1), pp. 339-367.
TUDOR, ALYSOXA, 2018 Cross-Fadings of Racialisation and Migratisation: The Postcolonial Turn in Western European Gender and Migration Studies, «Gender, Place and Culture», 25(7), pp. 1057-1072.
ZISAKOU, SOPHIA, 2021 Credibility Assessment in Asylum Claims Based on Sexual Orientation by the Greek Asylum Service: A Deep-Rooted Culture of Disbelief, «Frontiers in Human Dynamics», 3(1), pp. 1-15.
ZIVETZ, L. – BROGAN, K., 1991 Doing good: the Australian NGO community, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Giulia Birindelli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.