Transnational Queer Refugees: Gay Iranian Men Navigating Refugee Status and Cross-Border Ties in Canada

• In Event: 1464 - Immigrant Communities/Families

Abstract

Despite the rise in the displaced population numbers, refugees’ transnational lives, sexual minority refugees, in particular, have remained at the margins of transnational migration studies. In this paper, based on 35 interviews with gay Iranian refugees in Canada, I argue for refugees’ agencies and against the rhetoric that represents refugees as passive and inherently welfare-dependent. To this end, I focus on refugees’ transnational lives and analyze their agency in managing ties with their families back in Iran as well as building social ties with policy-makers and human rights activists in Canada. I connect transnational, forced, and queer migration literature to the broader body of social theory by drawing on Bourdieusian social theory and argue that it is necessary to deploy de-nationalized methods of inquiry to account for intra-group diversities as well as the social relations and symbolic ties that stretch beyond national borders in bringing social groups together.

Author

• Ahmad (Aryan) Karimi