Embodied Precarity: Queer Crossings and Sites of Resistance

• In Event: Queer Interrogations: State Sovereignty, Precarity, and Reproductive Rights

Abstract

Individuals unauthorized by the nation-state in which they live and those in the process of migrating without authorization can face both state and non-state violence. The situation is even more dire for queer migrants. In many cases, these individuals are fleeing countries that view their existence as a crime and condone, ignore, or instigate violence perpetrated against them. As a result, the deportation of queer bodies back to these countries is a matter of life or death. Unfortunately, queer migrants often don’t fare better in detention centers; constituting the highest rates of sexual and other physical violence. The state uses categories (of citizenship, of gender and sexuality) to discipline, control, and justify treating queer migrants as expendable bodies. Public discourse, in turn, can either perpetrate the state narrative or provide a counter-narrative to question the categorization and treatment of these groups. In this paper, I explore the precarity of queer migrants; but I also examine the challenges they pose to the state and the creation of potential sites of resistance due to the multiple border crossings in which they engage. It is through this challenging of existing state categories (e.g., citizen, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality) that queer migrants can cause ruptures in state power and disciplinary societies. Using queer theory, necropolitics, and feminist theory, I explore the precarity and promise of queer embodiment and the unsettling caused by border crossings of state-created boundaries (in all its meanings). I argue for the need for self-created identities and categories to challenge dominant narratives and to upset notions of which bodies matter. In an attempt to explore these issues and to look at these contestations in practice, I turn to state-level debates surrounding sanctuary policies in the United States. At the time of this writing, nine states are sanctuary states, five did so through legislation. Six states have passed bills prohibiting sanctuary cities. I read, watched, or listened to over 100 hours of legislative debates, committee meetings, and public hearings in the eleven states that passed legislation. Using this data, I examine how unauthorized queer migrants are characterized in public discourse, how they characterize themselves when allowed to participate in public hearings, and the impact of the inclusion of their voices on challenging the master narrative and creating a more inclusive understanding of bodies that deserve to live.

Author

• Mary McThomas, University of California, Irvine