New asylum protection categories and elusive filtering devices: the case of 'Queer asylum' in France and the UK. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Giametta, Calogero
• Is Part Of: Journal of ethnic and migration studies. Volume 46:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 142
• Page End: 157
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: Migration -- refugees -- sexualities -- gender -- asylum; Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; Race relations -- Periodicals; Emigration and immigration -- Periodicals; Assimilation (Sociology) -- Periodicals; 305.8005
• DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1500172
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1369-183X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In Europe asylum seekers are confronted with migration-filtering techniques when beginning their rights claiming procedures, during the decision-making process of their asylum claims, and finally across the procedural constraints imposed on them. In this article, I want to look at asylum through a focus on newly recognised refugee protection categories: sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). In so doing, I concentrate on the ordinary, yet effective, manifestations of the filtering devices inherent in the politics of asylum by examining the elusiveness of current migration control practices. I aim to elaborate on the discrepancy between the widening of refugee protection, through the inclusion of gender identity and sexual orientation as grounds of asylum, and the increasingly restrictive practices that define the refugee granting process in France and the UK. The analytical considerations in the article emerge from interviewing and conducting ethnography over a three-year period between London, Paris and Marseille with gender and sexual minority refugees, immigration lawyers and refugee support workers and volunteers. The article seeks to sociologically investigate the claim of 'asylum as filtering device' within two western European national settings.