Queer identities in conflict : experiences of providing and receiving LGBTQ+ asylum support in England and Germany

This thesis examines the motivations, relations and encounters that emerge in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) asylum support contexts in England and Germany. It asks how, why and with what effect LGBTQ+ asylum support is both provided and received, how it is experienced and engaged with, and how such support is framed by, contributes to and challenges gendered, racialised and securitised asylum processes. In addressing these questions, this thesis argues that LGBTQ+ asylum support is enmeshed within the disciplinary and regulatory logics of contemporary asylum systems, which have increasingly securitised, racialised and politicised the process of asylum seeking. This places the liberatory promise of LGBTQ+ rights and asylum to which many LGBTQ+ asylum support organisations subscribe in critical tension, leading to a diverse range of strategies and accommodations with and against state power by those working in support roles. At the same time, LGBTQ+ asylum claimants encounter support contexts in different and relational ways that respond to their own and other's meanings, expectations, aspirations, histories, languages, faiths, and beliefs. These shape how they search for and negotiate the support that is available to them, and indeed how and why they seek to help themselves and others. Likewise, those who provide support draw on diverse ethical, personal, political, and spiritual motivations that differently shape how they encounter and relate to those they help too. As such, this thesis conceptualises LGBTQ+ asylum support contexts as dynamic and hybrid spaces of emergence, leading to often complex, contradictory, and complimentary articulations of difference and sameness, particularly relating to LGBTQ+ identities, community and 'belonging'. These articulations are nevertheless also regulated, constrained, and shaped by (and shape) gendered, racialised and securitised asylum processes, including around the politics of providing and receiving assistance. Therefore, this thesis critically engages with how difference is constructed, negotiated, encountered, and challenged in and through everyday contexts of LGBTQ+ asylum support and in relation to wider gendered, racialised and securitised power dynamics. It also explores how we can better understand, conceptualise, and theorise ideas of community, identity and belonging in contexts of LGBTQ+ asylum support, where negotiations of sexual, gendered, cultural, national, and racial difference form a key backdrop to encounters, practices and experiences.