Citizenship acts: queer migrants and the negotiation of identity and belonging at Toronto Pride Week 2009

Abstract

The broader goal of this research is apply queer theory to the cultural narrative of migration in order to confuse, destabilize and complicate our pre-conceived notions about what it means to “belong” to a given community of society, what it means to cross borders, and what it means to be(come) “Canadian”. Drawing on the notion of “cultural citizenship”, this research will focus on the politics of belonging that are embedded in the spectacle of Toronto Pride Week 2009, as a prominent site of negotiation for queer migrant identities. In order to get at a more nuanced and complicated understanding of integration, this research will also be centered around the subjective life experience of Luka, a queer migrant who is also a performer at Pride Week. Luka’s performance will be discussed as a liminal space, which points to multiple ambivalences, and thus acts to challenge the discourse of identity and belonging. Keywords: queer migrants, performative identity, cultural citizenship, Pride Week, Toronto.