Abstract
Fleeing increased state-sponsored homo- and transphobia in their countries of origin, post-Soviet LGBTQ persons often seek political asylum in the West, including the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this ethnographic research analyzes asylum-seekers’ perceptions of the United States and the life they expect to be able to live after migration. I propose to view these perceptions and expectations as a discursive infrastructure of post-Soviet queer migration which influences and facilitates asylum-seekers’ mobility. I consider post-Soviet queer migration not just as movements of individual asylum-seekers fleeing homo- and transphobia, but as a part of broader social processes. I argue that US homonationalist discourses continue to attract LGBTQ migrants to the U.S. despite increased asylum deterrence and immigrant precarity. I also discuss the role of specifically post-Soviet discursive legacies in asylum-seekers’ imaginings of the United States. Their expectations of the United States, as an entity that would protect their rights and freedoms and promise a livable queer life, reflect a re-configuration of the “Imaginary West” which was initially a Soviet discursive production of an idealized version of the Western society. For contemporary post-Soviet LGBTQ asylum-seekers, it has a homonationalist flavor. In that sense, I suggest that homonationalist discourses that construct the U.S. as a welcoming place for LGBTQ asylum-seekers – however inaccurate and unrealistic – need to be considered as an important part of migration infrastructures. Additionally, I analyze post-Soviet asylum-seekers’ own “everyday” homonationalist rhetoric suggesting that it is nevertheless a motivational, if ambivalent concept as it enables them to discursively claim belonging in the U.S. despite extreme immigrant precarity.
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Notes
Formally a censorship law, the Russian “gay propaganda” ban, adopted in 2013 and expanded in 2022, prohibits dissemination of any positive representations of LGBTQ identities in film, literature, and the media (see Utkin, 2021). Scholars have argued that it effectively encourages violence and discrimination against queer Russians (Healey, 2017; Kondakov, 2022).
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Novitskaya, A. “I have come to this Country to be happy”: Homonationalism as Infrastructure of post-Soviet Queer Migration to the United States. Sexuality & Culture 27, 2016–2037 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10151-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10151-6