“I Thought We Had No Rights” – Challenges in Listening, Storytelling, and Representation of LGBT Refugees

Abstract

Storytelling serves as a vital resource for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans* (LGBT) refugees’ access to asylum. It is through telling their personal stories to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board that LGBT refugees’ claims for asylum are accessed and granted. Storytelling also serves as a mechanism for LGBT refugees to speak about social injustice within and outside of Canada. In this article, I explore the challenges of storytelling and social justice as an activist and scholar. I focus on three contexts where justice and injustice interplay in LGBT refugee storytelling: the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, public advocacy around anti-queer violence and refugee rights, and oral history research. I describe how in each arena storytelling can be a powerful tool of justice for LGBT refugees to validate their truths and bring their voices to the forefront in confronting state and public violence. I investigate how these areas can also inflict their own injustices on LGBT refugees by silencing their voices and reproducing power hierarchies.

Writing Storybooks as Storytelling: A Case Study of Two Families with Refugee Backgrounds

“…Additionally, data analysis of the children’s multimodal storybook-making process showed that the children decided on specific topics (e.g., schooling) for their multimodal book chapters based on their parents’ storytelling and employed various semiotic resources to create their own multimodal texts. Scholars have defined storytelling as an important practice for analyzing culture (Gallagher, 2011; Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 2019) and a tool for students to exercise their agency (Choi, 2018; Fobear, 2015; Kucirkova, 2019). While engaging in making their multimodal storybooks (Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2002), Gawa, Zin Min, and Swe Lin told their stories related to their families’ cultures, schooling experiences, and future career dreams.…”

“…Previous research has documented home literacy practices related to the cultural practices of families with refugee backgrounds, such as storytelling (Curenton et al, 2008; Palmer, 2000), playing and having conversations with siblings (Gregory, 1998, 2001), and navigating digital texts for social purposes (Omerbašić, 2015). Scholars have examined how families with refugee backgrounds identify storytelling as a culturally sustaining practice (Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 2019), as a tool to speak about social injustice, empower the voices of youth with refugee backgrounds (Fobear, 2015), and as a support for children’s agency (Choi, 2018; Kucirkova, 2019; Phillips, 2010). Storytelling has also been indentified as a social literacy practice to enable students to express their identities and solidarity (Gilhooly et al, 2019), as a multimodal method to help students develop language and literacy learning (Johnson & Kendrick, 2020), and as “a meaning-making practice” (De Fina et al, 2020, p. 366).…”

Queer asylum seekers in Belgium: Navigating reception centers

“…Since data collection took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in times when the quarantine restrictions were in place in Belgium, interviewing options were limited to online means exclusively (namely, Skype and Zoom). The interview topic guide was developed deductively based on the literature review (Fobear, 2015;Fremlova, 2017;Dhoest, 2018;Peumans, 2018;Windsong, 2018) and the testimonies of forced queer migrants in Belgium available online (De Vriendt, 2017;Depoorter, 2018;Gieghase, 2019aGieghase, , 2019bGieghase, , 2019c. Literature review and testimonies were also used as secondary data sources, providing supplementary material for analysis.…”

Intercultural Communication, the Influence of Trauma, and the Pursuit of Asylum in the United States

“…The applicants' slightest verbal or nonverbal missteps-whether the result of embellishment, nerves, or just the fallibility of memory-can disqualify their case. Scholars and immigrant rights activists have documented the "pervasive climate of disbelief" that engulfs the asylum-seeking process (Shuman & Bohmer, 2004, p. 406; see also Bhabha & Smith, 2007;Dolnick, 2011;Fobear, 2015;Gurer, 2019). Bond and Atoum (2000) found evidence of "cross-cultural similarities in the way that liars act and that behavioral concomitants of deception can be identified across cultures" (p. 394); still, listeners were more likely to judge speakers as deceptive if they were speaking in an unfamiliar language rather than the listener's language.…”