In)credible Subjects: NGOs, Attorneys, and Permissible LGBT Asylum Seeker IdentitiesIn this paper, I demonstrate how statist logics concerning acceptable lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) immigrants permeate civic spheres, creating new forms of exclusion for asylum seekers in the United States. Existing research on US asylum policy and procedures as they pertain to LGBT claimants suggests that a "gay enough" litmus test typifies U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudications, such that officers expect claimants to engage in conspicuous consumption of stereotypical commodities and culture and to appear visibly "LGBT," either through gender non-conformity or by being "out." My analysis focuses on the social as well as legal lives of LGBT asylum seekers in the United States. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected at specialist NGOs, I argue that limited ideas about LGBT subjectivity often structure NGO workers' attitudes and practices in ways that echo USCIS criteria for granting asylum. I demonstrate how NGO client selection and intake processes assume homonormative ideals and subtly yet effectively replicate existing adjudication norms. Within ostensibly non-governmental spaces, LGBT asylum seekers experience suspicion, surveillance, and pressure to conform to NGO workers' expectations of "credible" claimants. Contrary to NGOs' stated intentions, these processes extend, rather than challenge, existing barriers to asylum. [asylum, NGOs,

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The 'It Gets Better Project' (IGBP) is an online anti-homophobic bullying initiative directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. To date, 50,000 user-generated IGBP videos have attracted over 50 million views. In this critical discourse analysis of IGBP videos in the "Faith" category, I note how the projected ideologies therein overlap with and depart from conservative Christian rhetoric in surprising ways. I ask what gets better, for whom, and how that might happen. I then compare messages uploaded by laypeople and spokespeople of religious institutions. I argue that neoliberal assumptions are frequently evident in laypeople's emphases on individualism, economic success, urban spaces and heteronormative conceptions of time. Spokespeople, conversely, tend to emphasize community-based opposition to homophobia in the here and now. This ideological struggle highlights barriers to "it getting better" in the present but also creates space for politics of redistribution and an unexpected queering of societal norms.

Since their invention, picture postcards have played a key role in circulating racist and imperial ideologies. In this paper, the researcher explores how experiments in producing and exchanging postcards used in the Global Gender and Cultures of Equality (GlobalGRACE) project attempted to subvert traditional anthropological and colonial perspectives. Drawing on examples created for the exhibition Exchanging Cultures of Equality held in London in 2018, the author discusses how GlobalGRACE researchers in six different countries individually and collectively sought to disrupt and challenge historical imaginaries using postcards. The creative process required them consider how they might differently visualize, articulate, and publicly share ideas about their work and field sites while also asserting the value of transnational exchange. The researcher argues that critical reflection on the tensions and challenges that arose from this transnational collaborative experiment are both productive and necessary in informing further and new decolonising engagements with postcards

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