Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, advocates have argued for the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) people in humanitarian response efforts. Yet the application of this differential focus has been mixed among international policy guidelines and national programs. This research note details a queer theoretical approach to humanitarian crises that considers the intersectional factors that produce specific vulnerabilities within LGBT communities. We take two examples from distinct LGBT communities during the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the analytical risk of treating the umbrella acronym LGBT, indicating distinct identity groups, as monolithic and not differentiating within identity groups based on other factors. We contend that this monolithic approach risks obviating the way different structural forces further compound precarity during crisis. Thus, we make the case for rooting intersectional approaches in any queer analyses of crisis.

Over the past decade, the refugee protection regime has supposedly become more inclusive of queer and trans* people. Much literature has focused on the expansion of refugee status determination and the inclusion of LGBTQ asylum seekers. However, there are many areas of refugee policy that remain dependent on cisheteronormative assumptions and therefore exclude the queer and trans* forcibly displaced. This paper considers the concept of ‘the family’ and how it is used and understood in refugee protection. We make the normative argument that queer and trans* family units ought to qualify for refugee family reunion and group status determination. We do so by considering the concept of queer and trans* ‘chosen families’, arguing that these queer articulations of kinship are functionally and morally comparable to cisheteronormative conceptions of the family. We contend that considering the cisheteronormative underpinnings of the family in this way opens up the potential to queer other areas of refugee policy, and therefore paves the way to a more inclusive refugee protection regime.

No abstract

No abstract