Limbo life in Canada’s waiting room: Asylum-seeker as queer subject

Abstract

This paper puts queer theory’s “subjectless critique” of identity to work in challenging the state’s biopolitical use of essential, authentic identities in asylum law and practice. It not only builds upon, but also departs from existing scholarship that calls on state actors to recognize a wider range of forms of gender and sexual diversity that make people vulnerable to persecution. By contrast, I investigate how the practices of “destination” countries produce asylums-seekers as dispossessed, deportable, precarious queers, regardless of sexual identity or practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with asylum-seekers and their supporters in Toronto, Canada, I highlight the waiting room as one type of material and metaphorical space that produces asylum-seekers as liminal queer subjects. I argue that approaching queerness as precarity, rather than lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identity or even sexual and gender diversity, provides alternative and expansive ethical horizons for queer and migration politics.

Keywords

Queer refugee asylum subjectless critique waiting room waiting

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agamben

(1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Agamben

(2003) The Open: Man and Animal, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Agamben

(2005) State of Exception, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Anker

Ardalan

(2012) Escalating persecution of gays and refugee protection: COMMENT on “Queer cases make bad law.”. New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 44: 529–557.

Arendt

(2001) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Arendt H (2006) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York, NY: Penguin.

Berlant

(2000) The subject of true feeling: Pain, privacy, and politics. In: Ahmed

Kilby

Lury

et al. (eds) Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism, London: Routledge, pp. 33–47.

Berlant

(2011) Cruel Optimism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Black D and Keung N (2012) Immigration and refugee system: Canada made controversial changes in 2012. Toronto Star, 29 December. Available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2012/12/29/immigration_and_refugee_system_canada_made_controversial_changes_in_2012.html (accessed 20 April 2016).

10.

Brown

(2012) Gender and sexuality I: Intersectional anxieties. Progress in Human Geography 36(4): 541–550.

11.

Brown

(1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

12.

Brown

(2010) Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.

13.

Butler

(1994) Against proper objects: Introduction. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6(2–3): 1–26.

14.

Butler

(2004) Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence, London: Verso.

15.

Butler

(2009) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, London: Verso.

16.

Butler

(2012) Precarious life, vulnerability, and the ethics of cohabitation. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26(2): 134–151.

17.

Canadian Council for Refugees (2013) CCR decries dramatic drop in refugees resettled to Canada. Available at: http://ccrweb.ca/en/bulletin/13/03/07 (accessed 20 April 2016).

18.

Chakrabarty

(2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

19.

Chávez

(2013) Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

20.

Cohen

(1997) Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics? GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3(4): 437–465.

21.

Cohen T (2013) Ex-chairman raises bias concerns as refugee board seeks new leader. Canada.com, 1 March. Available at: http://o.canada.com/news/national/ex-chairman-raises-bias-concerns-as-refugee-board-seeks-new-leader/comment-page-1 (accessed 20 April 2016).

22.

Coleman

Grove

(2009) Biopolitics, biopower and the return of sovereignty. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27: 489–507.

23.

Conlon

(2011) Waiting: Feminist perspectives on the spacings/timings of migrant (im)mobility. Gender, Place and Culture 18(3): 353–360.

24.

Darling

(2009) Becoming bare life: Asylum, hospitality, and the politics of encampment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27: 649–665.

25.

De Genova

(2002) Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–447.

26.

De Genova

(2010) The queer politics of migration: Reflections on ‘illegality’ and incorrigibility. Studies in Social Justice 4(2): 101–126.

27.

Edelman

(2004) No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

28.

Eng

(2010) The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

29.

Eng

Halberstam

Muñoz

(2005) Introduction: What’s queer about queer studies now? Social Text 23(3–4): 1–17.

30.

Foucault

(1990) The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction, New York, NY: Vintage.

31.

Foucault

(2010) The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, New York, NY: Picador.

32.

Freeman

(2010) Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

33.

Garelli

Tazzioli

(2013) Arab springs making space: Territoriality and moral geographies for asylum seekers in Italy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31: 1004–1021.

34.

Georgis

(2013) The Better Story: Queer Affects from the Middle East, Albany: State University of New York Press.

35.

Gill

(2010) New state-theoretic approaches to asylum and refugee geographies. Progress in Human Geography 34(5): 626–645.

36.

Halberstam

(2004) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York: New York University Press.

37.

Hubbard

Sanders

(2003) Making space for sex work: Female street prostitution and the production of urban space. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(1): 75–89.

38.

Hyndman

Giles

(2011) Waiting for what? The feminization of asylum in protracted situations. Gender, Place and Culture 18(3): 361–379.

39.

Ingram

(2008) Domopolitics and disease: HIV/AIDS, immigration, and asylum in the UK. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 875–894.

40.

Isin

(2012) Citizens Without Frontiers, London: Bloomsbury.

41.

Kenney J (2010) Speaking notes for the Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Available at: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/speeches/2010/2010-06-29.asp (accessed 20 April 2016).

42.

Keung N (2012) Biometrics data collection: Canadian visa applicants from 29 countries will be fingerprinted. Toronto Star, 7 December. Available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/12/07/biometrics_data_collection_canadian_visa_applicants_from_29_countries_will_be_fingerprinted.html (accessed 20 April 2016).

43.

Keung N (2013) Asylum claims plummet—But is Canada sacrificing refugees for efficiency? Toronto Star, 15 December. Available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/15/asylum_claims_plummet_but_is_canada_sacrificing_refugees_for_efficiency.html (accessed 20 April 2016).

44.

Lee

EOJ

Brotman

(2011) Identity, refugeeness, belonging: Experiences of sexual minority refugees in Canada. Canadian Review of Sociology 48(3): 241–274.

45.

Legg

(2010) An intimate and imperial feminism: Meliscent Shephard and the regulation of prostitution in colonial India. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28(1): 68–94.

46.

Lewis

(2013) Deportable subjects: Lesbians and political asylum. Feminist Formations 25(2): 174–194.

47.

Lewis

(2014) “Gay? Prove it”: The politics of queer anti-deportation activism. Sexualities 17(8): 958–975.

48.

Ling J (2012) Government releases refugee ‘safe’ countries list. Toronto Xtra!, 14 December. Available at: http://dailyxtra.com/canada/news/government-releases-refugee-safe-country-list-51068 (accessed 20 April 2016).

49.

Luibhéid

(2008) Queer/migration: An unruly body of scholarship. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14(2–3): 169–190.

50.

Luibhéid

(2013) Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

51.

Luker

(2015) Performance anxieties: Interpellation of the refugee subject in law. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 30(1): 91–107.

52.

Malkki

(1995) Refugees and exile: From “refugee studies” to the national order of things. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 495–523.

53.

Manalansan

IV (2008) Queering the chain of care paradigm. Scholar & Feminist 6(3): Available at: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/immigration/manalansan_01.htm (accessed 20 April 2016).

54.

Marshall L (2014) Refugee claimants struggling to find health care after cuts. The Globe and Mail, 17 August. Available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/refugee-claimants-struggling-to-find-health-care-after-cuts/article20090315/ (accessed 20 April 2016).

55.

Mbembe A (2003) Necropolitics. Public Culture 15(1): 11–40.

56.

Mongia

(1999) Race, nationality, mobility: A history of the passport. Public Culture 11(3): 527–555.

57.

Mountz

(2010) Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

58.

Mountz

(2011) Where asylum-seekers wait: Feminist counter-topographies of sites between states. Gender, Place and Culture 18(3): 381–399.

59.

Mountz

(2013) Political geography I: Reconfiguring geographies of sovereignty. Progress in Human Geography 37(6): 829–841.

60.

Murray

DAB

(2016) Real Queer?: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus, London: Rowman & Littlefield.

61.

No One Is Illegal—Toronto (2010) Harper repeats past immigration blunders, targets migrants. Available at: http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/node/491 (accessed 20 April 2016).

62.

Oliver

(2004) The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

63.

Oswin

(2008) Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: Deconstructing queer space. Progress in Human Geography 32(1): 89–103.

64.

Oswin

(2010) The modern model family at home in Singapore: A queer geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(2): 256–268.

65.

Oswin

Olund

(2010) Governing intimacy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28(1): :, 60–67.

66.

Pratt G and Rosner V (eds) (2012) The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

67.

Puar

(2007) Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

68.

Rennie S (2012) Tories target alleged fake refugee bids. The Canadian Press, 21 February. Available at: http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/63981-tories-target-alleged-fake-refugee-bids (accessed 23 August 2016).

69.

Rutland

(2015) Enjoyable life: Planning, amenity, and the contested terrain of urban biopolitics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33(5): 850–868.

70.

Sedgwick

(2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

71.

Seitz DK (2014) “Is this enough proof?”: Queer “limbo life” in Canada's waiting room. Mask Magazine 11. Available at: http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-multiple-worlds-issue/life/queer-limbo-in-canadas-waiting-room (accessed 22 August 2016).

72.

Seitz

(2015) The trouble with Flag Wars: Rethinking sexuality in critical urban theory. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39(2): 251–264.

73.

Shakhsari

(2014) The queer time of death: Temporality, geopolitics and refugee rights. Sexualities 17(8): 998–1015.

74.

Shuman

Bohmer

(2008) Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century, London: Routledge.

75.

Shuman

Bohmer

(2014) Gender and cultural silences in the political asylum process. Sexualities 17(8): 939–957.

76.

Shuman

Hesford

(2014) Getting Out: Political asylum, sexual minorities, and privileged visibility. Sexualities 17(8): 1016–1034.

77.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2011 [1951]) Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/3b66c2aa10/convention-protocol-relating-status-refugees.html (accessed 20 April 2016).

78.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2016) Asylum-seekers. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/asylum-seekers.html (accessed 5 August 2016).

79.

van Doorn

(2013) Architectures of “the good life”: Queer assemblages and the composition of intimate citizenship. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31: 157–173.

80.

Waite

Valentine

Lewis

(2014) Multiply vulnerable populations: Mobilizing a politics of compassion from the “capacity to hurt.”. Social and Cultural Geography 15(3): 313–331.

81.

White

(2014) Documenting the undocumented: Toward a queer politics of no borders. Sexualities 17(8): 976–997.