Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question

Main author: Bruce-Jones, Eddie
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-39327
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic KD United Kingdom and Ireland
KZ Law of Nations
K Law
description Sexuality-based refugee claims constitute an expanding area of legal practice and scholarship. This expansion in the field of refugee law mirrors international efforts to address homophobia in various sites around the globe, and in legal terms, this has predominantly taken the form of rights-based protections, such as decriminalising same-sex sexual acts as a matter of civil and political rights. The strategies of addressing sex-, gender- and sexuality-based oppression in the context of free movement on one hand and constitutional protections on the other share a common set of tensions and dilemmas, and both risk re-inscribing fundamental aspects of the very violence that they each seek to address. This article asks what it might mean to “queer” refugee law, particularly in the context of its dynamic relationship with the discourse of decriminalisation. The article takes forward the centrality of sexual politics within the moral economy of migration regulation and attempts to approach it with the methodological impulse and transformative potential that “queer” suggests.
format Journal Article
author Bruce-Jones, Eddie
author_facet Bruce-Jones, Eddie
authorStr Bruce-Jones, Eddie
author_letter Bruce-Jones, Eddie
title Death Zones, Comfort Zones: Queering the Refugee Question
publisher Brill
publishDate 2015
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/39327/