“Without Casa Miga, I'd Be Dead”: A Case Study of LGBT-to-LGBT Refugee Assistance

• In Event: Celebrating Fifty Years of Queer Scholarship at APSA Mini-Conference: Negotiating Queerness in Policy and Politics

Abstract

Studies on LGBTQ+ refugees often focused on people fleeing an oppressive and heteronormative culture in the Global South to a democratic and LGBTQ+-friendly society in the Global North. As such, scholarship on humanitarian responses to queer displacement has focused on Northern-driven initiatives and organizations. However, in the case of the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis, where 83% of Venezuelans have moved to other countries in Latin America, the overall humanitarian response has been Southern-led. This is specifically the case for LGBTQ+ Venezuelan asylum seekers who are supported mainly by local, grassroots, and community organizations. This paper challenges the contemporary literature on humanitarianism which is focused on Northern-centric responses with a case study of LGBTQ+ Venezuelan asylum seekers in Brazil. Based on 56 surveys and 28 semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ Venezuelan asylum seekers and 15 key informant interviews with service providers, NGO staff, and politicians, this article examines and compares LGBTQ+ Venezuelan asylum seekers’ experiences of international, national, and local responses. Specifically, this article presents the work of Casa Miga, the first and only LGBTQ+ Refugee Centre in Brazil, to demonstrate the unique contributions of grassroots NGOs and citizen-led initiatives in reshaping our understandings and approaches to queer displacement. At the start of the pandemic, in the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in Latin America, fake news stories on social media claiming that LGBTQ+ people were the source of COVID-19 spread, causing our respondents in Manaus to fear for their safety and preventing some from expressing their preferred gender when outside Casa Miga. Respondents shared that Casa Miga kept them safe from COVID-19 and homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic violence during the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that being sheltered with other LGBTQ+ people and supported by local LGBTQ+ Brazilians helped develop a community of support that proved vital in Venezuelan LGBTQ+ refugees' transition to Brazil.

Author

• Tyler Valiquette, University College London