Anthropology’s Dr. Elif Sari will be particiapting in this panel on queer migration experiences!
This is a hybrid event! RSVP for in-person and virtual attendance here.
A Queer Panel—Part I: Exploring Transnational 2SLGBTQ+ Migration Journeys
This panel engages a transnational lens to explore the multifaceted legal, material, and lived experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ migrants and asylum seekers across their migration trajectories. It examines these journeys from countries of origin, through transit spaces, and finally to settlement in host nations like Canada. Drawing on diverse case studies—such as Iranian refugees in Turkey, racialized francophone 2SLGBTQ+ immigrants in Toronto and Ottawa, and broader contexts in the Global South—the panel interrogates themes of precarity experienced by queer communities, intersectionality, and resilience. Key discussions will delve into carceral frameworks of asylum, the structural “stuckness” faced by migrants in transit countries, and the paradox of Canada’s homonationalist narrative versus the lived realities of queer refugees navigating a fraught bureaucracy. The panel also considers the vital role of civil society in facilitating integration and well-being, as well as the creative and fugitive strategies 2SLGBTQ+ individuals deploy to carve out agency and belonging amid systemic constraints.
This two-part event will feature academic presentations in the morning and a panel discussion in the early evening with 2SLGBTQ+ immigrants, as well as artist-photographer, and Toronto-based drag artists. The workshop will aim to take stock of existing studies and provide some tentative answers to a range of research questions including: What are the intersectional challenges faced by 2SLGBTQ+ migrants throughout their migration journeys? How do systemic barriers like restrictive policies, labour exploitation, and precarious housing affect their lives? What roles do civil society and community-led initiatives play in fostering integration and well-being? And finally, how do 2SLGBTQ+ migrants resist confinement and create spaces of resilience and belonging?
See Dr. Sari’s talk “Carceral Asylum: LGBTQ+ refugees, waiting, and stuckness” at 11 AM
Abstract: Although LGBTQ+ refugees are recognized as a “vulnerable group” eligible for prioritized resettlement to the Global North, they are stranded in so-called transit countries like Turkey for years—sometimes over a decade—due to the resettlement countries’ restrictive asylum policies and border closures. As they wait, refugees struggle with the uncertainty of living in limbo, dire living conditions that turn them into informal and exploitable labor, and numerous restrictions that govern their mobilities, gender and sexuality, labor, and every aspect of their daily lives. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research and community engagement with Iranian LGBTQ+ refugees in Turkey awaiting resettlement to the Global North, this talk conceptualizes asylum as a carceral formation. It examines how refugees articulate their experiences in Turkey through metaphors such as “stuckness” (gir kardan), “imprisonment (zendooni shodan), “suffocation” (khafegi), and “modern slavery.” Analyzing how these metaphors manifest in lived experiences and policies, the talk explores the entrapment of LGBTQ+ refugees within interlocking systems of spatial confinement, protracted waiting, arduous asylum bureaucracy, labor exploitation, homo/transphobia, and deportability. At the same time, the talk highlights how refugees resist and reimagine these multiple forms of carcerality through fugitive and creative practices. From working informally to forging queer kinship networks to using drag as a form of escape—both literal and metaphorical—LGBTQ+ refugees carve out spaces of agency and survival amidst oppressive systems.
Other speakers include:
David A.B. Murray (York University), presenting “Queer Asylum in Illiberal times”
Ali Bhagat (Simon Fraser University), presenting “Queer global displacement: Organized state abandonment and refugee survival in the global North and South”
Carlo Charles (University of Windsor) and Arnaud Baudry (FrancoQueer Toronto), presenting “Favoriser le bien-être et l’intégration sociale de la communauté racisée LGBTQA+ de Toronto et Ottawa”
See information about Part 2: Documentary Film Screening Conversation with Filmmaker and Drag Artists here
