The Sexual Politics of Asylum
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 28 Russell Square
No booking required
The Sexual Politics of Asylum
Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in collaboration with Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality (BiGS)
Speakers:
Queer migrants experiencing the refugee process, similarly to other refugees, are often represented and targeted by the media, policymakers and social interventions as either 'bogus' claimants or victims. The practices and discourses surrounding asylum repeatedly fail to recognise the complexity of migrants' journeys and decisions. They legitimise restrictive migration policies and social interventions by increasing the vulnerability of the populations they aim to rescue'"specifically through the criminalization, removal and deportation processes they enforce.
Over the past decade the topic of asylum for LGBT people has attracted wide media attention in the UK, in particular since sexuality and gender have become legitimate rights-claiming objects in the context of migration policies. In this workshop, we will refer to the instrument of asylum through the lens of gender and sexuality studies. The questions on which we will elaborate include; how is this form of protection enacted, specifically at a time when asylum is viewed with heightened suspicion by the political class and larger society? How does the asylum system intervene with claimants' understandings of themselves and in what ways does this affect their livelihoods in the country of arrival? What's at stake in critically reflecting on the figure of the refugee at this historical conjuncture?
Free event open to all: Book your place
This is the first of the two events that Dr Giametta is organising during his research fellowship at the BIH. The second event will take place on December 13th. More details to follow.
About the speakers:
Eddie Bruce-Jones is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck. Bruce Jones serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Race Relations and the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group. He is a comparative law specialist for the Independent Commission on the Death of Oury Jalloh (on police brutality and due process) in Germany as well as Sexuality and Gender Identity Resource Co-ordinator for The Refugees in Exhile Programme of the International Refugee Rights Initiative. He is the author of Race in the Shadow of Law: Activism in Contemporary Europe (2016).
Calogero Giametta is a sociologist and his research to date has examined the lived experiences of gender and sexual minority refugees and on the discourses linking the politics of sexuality and the refugee granting process in the UK. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at Aix-Marseille Université (2014-2016) within the research project Embodied Borders: Problematising Sexual Humanitarianism. Currently he is Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College. He is the author of the Sexual Politics of Asylum (forthcoming, 2017).
Alyosxa Tudor is Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London. In the past Alyosxa was LSE Fellow in Transnational Gender Studies and Senior Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS. Their work connects trans and queer feminist approaches with transnational feminism and postcolonial studies. Alyosxa's main research interest lies in analysing (knowledge productions on) migrations, diasporas and borders in relation to critiques of Eurocentrism and to processes of gendering and racialisation.
The Birkeck Institute for the Humanities stimulates research, public debate and collaboration among academics and intellectuals on important issues of our time. Key to its remit is the promotion of new ideas and forms of understanding in the humanities.
BiGS provides a forum for innovative interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange in gender and sexuality studies. It brings together scholars working in the arts and humanities and the social sciences and encourages dialogue with practitioners in the creative industries as well as with non-academic constituencies.
Contact name:
Madisson Brown