Thibaut Raboin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099632
- eISBN:
- 9781526121011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099632.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Discourses on LGBT asylum in the UK analyses fifteen years of debate, activism and media narrative and examines the way asylum is conceptualized at the crossroads of nationhood, post colonialism and ...
More
Discourses on LGBT asylum in the UK analyses fifteen years of debate, activism and media narrative and examines the way asylum is conceptualized at the crossroads of nationhood, post colonialism and sexual citizenship, reshaping in the process forms of sexual belongings to the nation.
Asylum has become a foremost site for the formulation and critique of LGBT human rights. This book intervenes in the ongoing discussion of homonationalism, sheds new light on the limitations of queer liberalism as a political strategy, and questions the prevailing modes of solidarity with queer migrants in the UK.
This book employs the methods of Discourse Analysis to study a large corpus encompassing media narratives, policy documents, debates with activists and NGOs, and also counter discourses emerging from art practice. The study of these discourses illuminates the construction of the social problem of LGBT asylum. Doing so, it shows how our understanding of asylum is firmly rooted in the individual stories of migration that are circulated in the media. The book also critiques the exclusionary management of cases by the state, especially in the way the state manufactures the authenticity of queer refugees. Finally, it investigates the affective economy of asylum, assessing critically the role of sympathy and challenging the happy goals of queer liberalism.
This book will be essential for researchers and students specializing in refugee studies and queer studies.Less
Discourses on LGBT asylum in the UK analyses fifteen years of debate, activism and media narrative and examines the way asylum is conceptualized at the crossroads of nationhood, post colonialism and sexual citizenship, reshaping in the process forms of sexual belongings to the nation.
Asylum has become a foremost site for the formulation and critique of LGBT human rights. This book intervenes in the ongoing discussion of homonationalism, sheds new light on the limitations of queer liberalism as a political strategy, and questions the prevailing modes of solidarity with queer migrants in the UK.
This book employs the methods of Discourse Analysis to study a large corpus encompassing media narratives, policy documents, debates with activists and NGOs, and also counter discourses emerging from art practice. The study of these discourses illuminates the construction of the social problem of LGBT asylum. Doing so, it shows how our understanding of asylum is firmly rooted in the individual stories of migration that are circulated in the media. The book also critiques the exclusionary management of cases by the state, especially in the way the state manufactures the authenticity of queer refugees. Finally, it investigates the affective economy of asylum, assessing critically the role of sympathy and challenging the happy goals of queer liberalism.
This book will be essential for researchers and students specializing in refugee studies and queer studies.
Thibaut Raboin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099632
- eISBN:
- 9781526121011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099632.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter argues that the production of queer liberalism is central to the affective politics of LGBT asylum: discourses on suffering and sympathy are central in the self-representation of queer ...
More
This chapter argues that the production of queer liberalism is central to the affective politics of LGBT asylum: discourses on suffering and sympathy are central in the self-representation of queer liberals as sexual citizens with a claim to the state; and discourses on potential happiness are catalysts in the representation of refugees as an exhortation of happiness, and a cruel optimism. This analysis shows how the homonationalist configuration of public discourses is hinged upon representation of queer happiness (as an objective) and sympathy (as an affective relational mode).This chapter distinguishes between two affective modes of identification for liberal queers: the first is through the politics of sympathy and the potential identification of liberal queers with refugees; and the second works through a reconfiguration of discourses on sexual citizenship, nationhood and the appropriation by liberal queers of the wound of being queer embodied by refugees.Less
This chapter argues that the production of queer liberalism is central to the affective politics of LGBT asylum: discourses on suffering and sympathy are central in the self-representation of queer liberals as sexual citizens with a claim to the state; and discourses on potential happiness are catalysts in the representation of refugees as an exhortation of happiness, and a cruel optimism. This analysis shows how the homonationalist configuration of public discourses is hinged upon representation of queer happiness (as an objective) and sympathy (as an affective relational mode).This chapter distinguishes between two affective modes of identification for liberal queers: the first is through the politics of sympathy and the potential identification of liberal queers with refugees; and the second works through a reconfiguration of discourses on sexual citizenship, nationhood and the appropriation by liberal queers of the wound of being queer embodied by refugees.
