Inequalities Across Borders: Assessing the Intersections of Policy, Institutional Interactions, and Individual Experiences for LGBTQIA Refugees

Introduction

Immigration has been a subject of intense political debate since the 1980s in the United States, with recent election and news cycles showcasing flaws within the United States’ refugee and asylum policies. The country’s policies and practices have earned it international criticism from human rights observers and journalists, who voice criticisms about the treatment of migrants in various detention centers at the southern border of the United States, especially LGBTQIA asylum seekers and other vulnerable populations like minors from the Central American and Caribbean region (see Morin, 2020). In addition, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the resulting refugee population from the region has also re-introduced questions about the experiences of endangered LGBTQIA persons among these refugee populations (Human Rights Campaign, 2021). Currently, at least 69 countries criminalize LGBTQIA behavior, and others offer little protection for LGBTQIA citizens who face violence and oppression within the less progressive societies in which they were born (Goshal & Schacher, 2020; Shaw et al., 2021). These circumstances contribute to the large number of refugee and asylum seekers moving to more LGBTQIA-friendly countries, including the United States.

This chapter interrogates the ways that domestic and international institutional processes and interpersonal interactions work to mitigate, reproduce, or maintain inequalities and challenges facing LGBTQIA immigrants/refugees. LGBTQIA asylum seekers remain an underserved population that NGOs and government agencies struggle to serve due to unique challenges and traumas associated with escaping persecution and rebuilding their lives (Chávez, 2011; Fox et al, 2020; LaViolette, 2013; Portman & Weyl, 2013). It is important to investigate how family dynamics, work difficulties, violence, and politics operate to motivate LGBTQIA persons to seek asylum in the United States in the first place, along with the ways that immigration, refugee, and resettlement processes might positively and negatively impact LGBTQIA individuals. Further, investigating the ways that immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers experience everyday life in their originating and destination countries grants a unique perspective on the international dynamics that reproduce and maintain inequalities between individuals within and between countries. Refugees entering the United States often come from fragile, authoritarian, and economically unstable countries whose fates are linked to U.S. foreign and economic policy.

This chapter explores the dual role that the United States plays in the reproduction of inequalities, first through direct and indirect influences that encourage refugee flows and second, through the accompanying processes of resettling refugees and asylum seekers. Many LGBTQIA individuals seek to gain refuge in the United States itself due to its position in the world political system but are met with a host of domestic political and policy challenges that reinforce their systematic exclusion as immigrants and as LGBTQIA persons. Foreign policies of developed countries (including the U.S.) often create, reproduce, or reinforce the conditions that have prompted people to flee their homes in the first place (Borjas, 2001; Lavanex & Ucarer, 2004; Tucker & Wrigley, 1990), creating layers of economic, physical, and personal oppression for LGBTQIA persons both at home and abroad.