Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question

22(1) International Journal on Minority and Group Rights

Posted: 22 Jan 2015 Last revised: 2 Apr 2020

See all articles by Eddie Bruce-Jones

Eddie Bruce-Jones

University of London, Birkbeck School of Law

Date Written: January 1, 2015

Abstract

Sexuality-based refugee claims constitute an expanding area of legal practice and scholarship. This expansion in the field of refugee law mirrors international efforts to address homophobia in various sites around the globe, and in legal terms, this has predominantly taken the form of rights-based protections, such as decriminalising same-sex sexual acts as a matter of civil and political rights. The strategies of addressing sex-, gender- and sexuality-based oppression in the context of free movement on one hand and constitutional protections on the other share a common set of tensions and dilemmas, and both risk re-inscribing fundamental aspects of the very violence that they each seek to address. This article asks what it might mean to ‘queer’ refugee law, particularly in the context of its dynamic relationship with the discourse of decriminalisation. The article takes forward the centrality of sexual politics within the moral economy of migration regulation and attempts to approach it with the methodological impulse and transformative potential that ‘queer’ suggests.

Keywords: Queer, LGBTI, refugee law

Suggested Citation

Bruce-Jones, Eddie A., Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question (January 1, 2015). 22(1) International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2553220

Eddie A. Bruce-Jones (Contact Author)

University of London, Birkbeck School of Law ( email )

Malet Street
London, WC1E 7HX
United Kingdom

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