Creating queer subjects: human rights and the adjudication of LGBTI asylum claims

Anna C. Korteweg

Chapter 9 in Handbook on Politics and Society, 2025, pp 167-184 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Those seeking asylum are increasingly interpreted not as rights-seeking persons under the 1951 Refugee Convention but as duplicitous subjects who try to use narratives of persecution to gain access to wealthy countries that are otherwise closed to them (Gill and Good 2019). Nation-states in the global north have moved towards a system of refugee adjudication that centres on a believable narrative and performance of membership in a persecuted group. Thus, refugee determination policies not only regulate but also constitute subjects. Using the Dutch case as an illustration, this chapter shows how queer performativity is managed in the interface between state actors who adjudicate asylum claims and activists assisting refugee claimants. The resulting processes of queer subject formation reflect that human rights, or the rights associated with innate personhood, can only become meaningful within the confines of the state. Applying the concept of homonationalism, or the mobilization of gay rights to demonstrate legitimacy for exclusionary state projects, shows that those state-bound rights are always partial and to some extent fragile.

Keywords: Refugee claims adjudication; Queer refugees; LGBTQ; Arendt; Refugee law; Subject formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301898
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