Homemaking and perpetual liminality among queer refugees

Abstract

As people continue to flee repressive regimes, discussions of refugees' state of liminality have intensified. Refugee camps and detention centres tend to force refugees to endure living in liminality for long periods of time. Taking fleeing as a point of departure, this study suggests a change from the notion of fleeing as movement to a search for home and homemaking. This understanding shifts the analysis away from state-controlled spaces to a wider consideration of spaces of importance for homemaking. Widening the discussion on liminality to homemaking indicates that liminality can be experienced in a variety of spaces. Using material from interviews with queer refugees in the Swedish countryside, I discuss their travels, displacements and homemaking. Their stories show that creating a home is a continuous process delimited by norms in families, ethnic networks, host societies and queer networks. Not adhering to these norms renders homemaking difficult and pushes some queer refugees to liminal spaces. Thus, I suggest an understanding of some queer refugees as constantly rejected and pushed into a perpetual state of liminal homemaking. An analysis that illuminates refugees' displacements from belonging moves discussions of liminality away from statecontrolled spaces and highlights the norms that govern the homemaking process. Faire son chez-soi et liminalité perpétuelle chez les réfugiés queer RÉSUMÉ Alors que les peuples ne cessent de fuir les régimes répressifs, les débats sur l'état de liminalité des réfugiés se sont intensifiés. Les camps de réfugiés et centres de détention ont tendance à forcer les réfugiés à endurer un état de vie liminaire pendant de longues périodes. Prenant comme point de départ la notion de fuite, cette étude suggère de penser la fuite non comme mouvement mais comme quête d'un chez-soi. Cette interprétation fait glisser l'analyse au-delà de la question des espaces contrôlés par l'État vers une considération des espaces importants pour la fabrique d'un chez-soi. Élargir la discussion sur la liminalité à la fabrique d'un chez-soi signifie que la liminalité peut être vécue au travers une variété d'espaces. À l'aide d'entretiens avec des réfugiés queer ARTICLE HISTORY

Transnational Families, Intimate Relations, Generations

“…Yet, as highlighted in the queer migration literature, homemaking in diverse home spaces tends to be negotiated in spaces of liminality, dislocation and opposition especially to homonationalism and heteronormativity (Luibhéid, 2008;Mole, 2016;Wimark, 2019). At the same time, some of those tensions have been used as a springboard for research focusing on the potential benefit of 'queer diaspora' as a heuristic device to think about identity, belonging and solidarity among sexual minorities in the context of dispersal and transnational networks (Mole, 2018).…”

Syrian Women Refugees: Coping with indeterminate liminality during forcible displacement

“…While "transitional liminality" (Bamber, Allen-Collinson, & McCormack, 2017, p. 1514 starts with a triggering event and lasts for a specific period (e.g., Ladge, Clair and Greenberg's (2012) conceptualisation of pregnancy as a liminal period with a clear beginning and end)), so far, there has been little attention on how actors manage ongoing, and potentially endless periods of liminality. We argue that deepening this understanding is crucial to unpack how forcibly displaced actors cope with liminality, as the liminal spaces such as detention centres and refugee camps tend to force refugees to endure coping with liminality for long periods without a precise end date (Wimark, 2019). Perpetual liminality is conceptualised as a state in which the temporal and transitional periods have become institutionalised and where the state of social limbo has become indefinite (Johnsen & Sørensen, 2015) and the three sequenced phases of the rites of passage have become frozen (Szakolczai, 2000).…”

Social geography I: Time and temporality

“…Other research on migration and sexuality highlights the experiences of gay and queer migrants, emphasising the challenges such migrants face developing rootedness and belonging in another place over time – resulting in what Wimark (2019: 3) describes as an ‘enduring temporality of fleeing’ – because of how sexual orientation intersects with identity axes such as the class, ethnicity and state frameworks governing their mobility. Providing a ‘southern perspective’, Luo’s (2020) study of rural–urban gay migrants underscores how the rural–urban divide in China translates into circular migration for middle-class gay men, a spatial division that locates the ‘productive sphere’ (i.e.…”