Undocuqueer Stress: How Safe Are "Safe" Spaces, and for Whom?

• In Event: 67.068 - MTCC Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 67.068-10 - Narratives of Latinx UndocuQueers

Abstract

This study explored the ways 31 undocuqueer immigrants experienced the stress of exclusion, rejection, or anxiety in two LGBT “safe spaces”: the physical location of an LGBT bar or club, and the interpersonal site of a relationship. Nightclubs and relationships are constructed as environments that offered protection from the physical, psychological, and emotional harm that undocuqueer immigrants suffer at the hands of society as a result of their distance from cisgender heteronormativity and citizenship orthodoxies. However, congruent with the findings of previous studies (Ramirez, Gonzalez, & Galupo, 2018), such spaces are not necessarily safe. For participants whose foreign passports, matriculas, and DACA cards often served to exclude and render them illegible, LGBT nightclubs represented potentially unsafe environments where individuals were precluded from entry into a club or questioned at the door. Such experiences had a direct impact on the ways participants internalized actual and perceived rejection and disidentification with the broader LGBT community.

Author

• Jesus Cisneros, University of Texas at El Paso