Abstracts for Migration and Discipline: Civic Fostering of Gender, Sexuality, and the Body

Nadine El-Enany

“But they are good citizens!”: How the Windrush scandal masked the violence of the British Empire and immigration control

In this paper, I critically examine the 2018 Windrush Scandal, showing how the “good citizen” narrative serves to mask historical and ongoing colonial and racial violence. The invocation of the wronged ‘good citizen’ by scholars and in political and media discourse has the effect of reifying the category of British citizenship and inadvertently reproduces colonial logics that justify differential treatment on the basis of a supposed absence of civilisation. Regimes of legal status recognition, such as citizenship laws, operate according to a colonial civilisational logic. Determining whether an applicant meets the criteria for citizenship is a form of sorting the civilised from the uncivilised and has racialising outcomes. The discretionary ‘good character’ test, for instance, is used increasingly as a means of refusing naturalisation applications. Further, following the public outcry at the treatment of the Windrush generation, the British government refused to include in the numbers of those wrongfully expelled, so-called ‘foreign criminals’. The exclusion of people deported following criminal conviction from restitution measures marks them as uncivilised, as unworthy of legal rights and redress because they have not met the standards for inclusion set by the colonial state. This is an example of the way in which British subjecthood, even in its contemporary forms, remains a fragile status for racialised people, who can be cast out, or treated as ‘aliens’ for legal purposes, when this suits the objectives of the colonial state.  

David A.B. Murray

Queer Refugees and the Re/Organization of Homonationalist Discourses

How does the queer refugee both trouble and reinscribe discourses about citizenship and the nation-state? More generally, how are national borders and citizenship formations organized through and transformed by terminologies and discourses pertaining to the queer migrant? In my research examining the experiences of sexual orientation and gender identity expression (SOGIE) refugee claimants moving through the Canadian refugee determination apparatus, I observed the powerful impact of particular linguistic assemblages of gender, sexuality, race and class as they are applied to the assessment of SOGIE refugee claims. However, rather than view these assemblages as fixed constellations of socio-sexual terminologies that buttress particular nationalist identifications, in this paper I argue for a more flexible definition of homonationalism that recognizes the dynamism of state bureaucratic apparatuses in charge of regulating national borders as they continuously adapt to shifting nationalist sentiments of ruling governments, data produced from the surveillance and tracking of migrants, and new discourses about and definitions of queer migrants. This dynamism is often framed through an official narrative emphasizing the progressive justice of the nation-state, but I argue that what results is a merely a re-arrangement of gate-keeping mechanisms, with detrimental results for claimants who do not ‘fit’ these re-arrangements.

Jaana Vuori

This is Finland. Looking at migrant integration from the perspective of societal knowledge making and gender

In 2009, I published a very critical discourse analysis on how gender issues and ethnicity were intertwined in guide books produced for migrants and professionals working with them. Since then, the amount of information materials, both in written form and as videos has expanded a great deal. In addition, they are not produced only from the perspective of the “official society” but also from a more grass root level perspective, including also the perspective of migrants or ethnic-linguistic minorities. Gender equality, for example, is no more “already accomplished” but it is under constant construction and “rainbow families” are depicted as a central phenomenon in the society. In my talk, I try to dig me deeper into the current edifying migrant integration materials by asking how gender and sexuality are embedded into our understanding about society.

Thomas Wimark

Domesticizing sexual orientation and gender identity asylum seekers and refugees

In the last decade, integration discourses and policy discussions regarding seeking asylum have gained momentum, with ever more individuals fleeing repressive regimes, poverty, and environmental catastrophes. This increasing incidence of asylum number has compelled attention towards asylum systems and governance of migrants. In these forums, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) asylum seekers and refugees represent contradictory subjects. On the one hand, granting asylum to SOGI asylum seekers has proxied in the Global North for inclusion and tolerance of LGBT individuals. On the other hand, SOGI asylum seekers often do not meet heteronormative and homonormative societal expectations and their visible difference juxtaposes much societal Whiteness thus evoking anxiety in popular rhetoric. In this keynote, I draw from research with SOGI asylum seekers to show how they are continuously domesticized in the society based on heteronormative and homonormative standards. I diverge from the idea that the asylum system is the main space for making home in a country of settlement and argue that such home-making occurs through time and space. Taking searching for home and homemaking as a point of departure, I show that SOGI asylum seekers and refugees are forced to endure living in liminality for long periods of time. This position shifts analyses away from state-controlled spaces to a wider consideration of the types and range of spaces important tor homemaking.

Katharina Kehl

The Right Kind of Queer: Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Constructions of Swedishness

Recent decades have seen an increased mobilisation of LGBT rights in nationalist projects of (non-)belonging. Notions of so-called “gender exceptionalism” have cast Sweden as exceptionally progressive with regard to gender equality and LGBT rights, a particularly good place to be queer in. However, in order to be included into the protective national fold, one has to perform the “right” (that is, recognisable) kind of queerness. This presentation explores discursive constructions of Swedishness through LGBT rights across three research sites: A “pride parade” organised by the Swedish populist right, Swedish Armed Forces’ marketing material, and personal experiences shared on an Instagram account for racialised LGBTQ people. It provides new insights into the role played by race, sexuality, and gender in attempts at defining (non-)belonging by looking at how constructions of Swedishness rely on separating an LGBTQ-friendly Swedish Self from various dangerous and racialised Others. It also investigates which subject positions are suggested and experienced as “intelligible” within the context of these constructions as separations are maintained by narratives of threat and protection. Finally, it discusses how such normative grids of intelligibility are negotiated as racialised LGBTQ people challenge and manoeuvre them; carving out liveable lives for themselves in the context of exclusionary constructions of Swedishness.

Mia Liinason

‘The loved home’ and other exclusionary care discourses. An analysis of heteroactivist resistances to gender, sexual and migrant rights in Sweden

Feminist and postcolonial scholars in Sweden have shown how gender equality and LGBTI+ rights have taken shape through discourses that define and delimit national belonging by sustaining hierarchies and producing norms regarding sexuality, gender, race/ethnicity, citizenship and class. In this presentation, I want to focus on how heteroactivist forms of resistance enter into negotiation with this national project, as a form of resistance that seeks to place heteronormativity as superior to other sexual/gendered identities and foundational to a healthy society. Drawing on digital ethnography with heteroactivist actors in a Swedish context, in this presentation, I will examine a debate that took shape around the rainbow flag in a Swedish municipality, to explore how seemingly contradictory positionings on national and local levels works to highlight and denigrate various perceived threats to the ‘shared home’, such as ‘Muslim others’. While previous research has paid attention to the ways in which these new heteroactivist politics have shifted from violent or aggressive expression to more subtle resistances, my ethnography brings new insight to how heteroactivist projects are sustained through exclusionary discourses of love, care and protection of the purity and unity of ‘the home’. The analysis reveals how care, love and gratitude for the shared home are core elements used in heteroactivist negotiations with contextually established notions of gender equality and sexual rights as national values, and demonstrates how the home, which these actors seek to cherish and protect, takes shape as an exclusive and exclusionary space.

Tommaso M. Milani, Simon Bauer, Andrea Spehar and Kerstin von Brömssen

In the name of the state? Femonationalism and civic orientation for newly arrived migrants in Sweden

Sweden has successfully produced an wide-spread image as the most gender equal society in the world. An extensive body of work has given nuanced accounts how such gendered nationalism is discursively constructed (see e. g. Martinsson et al., 2016, Nygren et al., 2018; Spehar, 2015). What has remained somewhat overlooked is how migrants are being socialized into this national ‘myth’ and how they relate to it. In order to partly address this gap, this presentation investigates how the nexus of gender equality and nationalism plays out in ‘Civic Orientation for Newly Arrived Adult Migrants’ (samhällsorientering), an educational provision that is compulsory for any migrant who has been granted a residence permit and is part of the Employment Service’s ‘establishment programme’. Drawing upon a multi-pronged approach that brings together intersectionality, ethnography and femonationalism (Farris, 2017), we illustrate how the official, state-driven discourse about Swedish gender equality is presented, negotiated and contested in interactions between teachers and course participants. More specifically, we show how the nexus of ethnicity, gender and religion is activated by the course leaders and is (re)framed and contested by the participants. Theoretically, we also seek to contribute to current theoretical discussions about femonationalism. This is a concept that, at least in the Swedish context, has been primarily employed to discuss extreme, far-right co-optation of feminist agendas, but is in our view relevant to capture the more mundane, but no less pernicious double-standards of mainstream Swedish politics in its management of migrants.

Kristine Køhler Mortensen

Teaching “Danish sexual morals”: Mobilizing ideas of national sexuality in civic education for asylum seekers

This presentation examines how concepts of gender and sexuality are increasingly mobilized as symbolic values in Danish immigration politics. The Danish national self-perception rests on an idea of widespread tolerance especially regarding gender and sexuality. However, understandings of gender and sexuality as represented in Danish immigration discourse draw clear boundaries between insider and outsider. As of recently the Danish parliament decided to introduce compulsory teaching in so-called “Danish sexual morals” at Danish asylum centers as a way to correct and secure ‘the foreigner’s’ sexual behavior. The presentation discusses how gender and sexuality are articulated and culturally contextualized in such teaching activities. Based on fieldwork conducted at a Danish asylum center, I investigate how the requirement for teaching “Danish sexual morals” is dealt with by practitioners, teachers, and asylum seekers. Based on participant observation and audio recordings of classroom interaction I demonstrate how teachers experience a split between “cultural imperialism” and “good intentions” and thus simultaneously come to reproduce and pose challenges to static concepts of particular national sexualities. Additionally, the interactional analysis shows how asylum seekers push back against dominant understandings of culturally specific conceptualizations of gender and sexuality by offering personal narratives that reveal countering experiences.

Diana Mulinari

The category of migrant mothers: a problem, a burden, a threat and a suffering object

The aim of the article is to provide some analytical elements, to understand both continuity and change of the representation of migrant mothers with specific focus on the dialectical relation between the field of cultural representation and the field of political economy. Theoretically, the analysis is framed through two dimensions of racism, exploitative and exclusionary, often legitimated by a racist grammar of diverse forms of caring racism. Methodologically, the essay is inspired by Black /Chicano feminist tradition of intellectual activism (Collins 2012) accepting the dilemmas of “taking sides” (Armbruster & Laerke 2008). The article is crafted through two types of empirical material: first, it follows the category of migrant women through the narratives of antiracist-identified feminists. many of them of migrant background aged between 25 and 30. The narratives collected underlined the fundamental role the category play for these feminist daughters raised in families where mothers are conceptualized as “migrant women”. Critical discourse analysis is the source of inspiration for the second section of the article that further elaborates on the construction of migrant women as a problem, a burden and a threat in Swedish governmental policy documents over four decades.

Guðbjörg Ottósdóttir and Linda Sólveigar Guðmundsdóttir

Queer Refugees in Queer Utopias: Inclusions and Exclusions

We discuss an Icelandic project which aims to generate knowledge on social experiences of SOGIE refugees of reception, integration, and deportation in Iceland and in transnational contexts, with a particular focus on Italy and Greece, countries Iceland commonly deports SOGIE refugees to. The project targets SOGIE refugees in Iceland, Greece, and Italy, as well as professionals in reception and social support services. The project utilizes mixed qualitative methods. Iceland presents an interesting case due to its size, geopolitical location and its experience with receiving refugees compared to other Nordic countries. Current knowledge on queer refugees in the Nordic and European contexts highlights that migration and sexuality intersect to create multiple intersecting relations of power, including that of social status regarding ‘race’, class, gender, and citizenship status. The majority of SOGIE refugees tend to be deported and a sense of connection and belonging to each new migration location is thus often fraught with complex attachments and feelings in conflicting discourses on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in their lives, which characterize the varied social and digital spaces they are involved in, such as the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic diasporas, social services, as well as general society. This project investigates lived experiences of SOGIE refugees regarding varied social and transnational spaces and digital spaces (currently missing in the literature), and connections with the notion of a ‘gay utopia’ characterizing images of countries in the Global North such as Iceland and the Netherlands.