1 Introduction

This chapter brings together some of the recurring but not always visible phenomena relating to SOGI asylum that have remained below the surface in the previous chapters. We are keen not to conflate or homogenise what are often very different individual experiences in Germany, Italy and the UK. Rather, we identify themes and common factors that may take diverse forms but that, at the same time, shaped the experiences of our participants and are the basis for the targeted recommendations in our final chapter. We group these phenomena under four headings: identities, discrimination, place and agency. By doing so, this chapter draws together the recurring or more significant findings from the chapters that constitute Part II, and presents and analyses them using the theoretical approaches in Chap. 3 to show that what may appear to be discrete phenomena in fact derive from systemic failures to apply an intersectional, queer, feminist and human rights based understanding to SOGI asylum.

2 Identities

Chapter 3 looked to feminism and queer theory to disrupt essentialist portrayals of marginalised individuals and groups, specifically women and SOGI minorities. This approach resonates with the experiences of SOGI asylum claimants addressed in Part II of this work. It is particularly helpful in understanding how stereotypes based on SOGI, but also on SOGI in relation to other characteristics – such as age, gender, religion, education – come together to create expectations of how a particular claimant should present themselves for their claim to be successful.

2.1 Homogenisation

SOGI asylum is very often based on extrapolating the needs and experiences of a minority – generally young gay men – to the wider and diverse group of individuals claiming asylum based on SOGI. Throughout our fieldwork, the acronym LGBT (or a variation of it such as LGBTIQ+ as we use) was used by decision-makers, lawyers, NGO staff and often claimants themselves. However, on further questioning, the claimants speaking or being discussed were generally members of a narrower group: ‘One has to say that we have relatively few lesbians…’ (Nina, legal advisor, Germany); ‘We have no lesbian or transgender experience’ (Giulia, LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy); ‘I have only had gay and lesbian [claimants], so I have never had transgender. Oh, we have had one, I have had one bi client…’ (Deirdre, lawyer, UK).

Bisexual claimants were especially absent and we were not able to contact any claimant who identified as intersex or having intersex variations. The lack of research and awareness of bisexual individuals’ experiences of claiming asylum has been identified in a North American and Australian context by Sean Rehaag (2009). It is likely that in Europe the same difficulty applies in reconciling bisexuality with the immutability generally looked for as contributing to credibility:

I think there is still the reliance on stereotypes is another thing. And that for example particularly for the bi community then that erases them entirely. Because if you have a person who identifies as bisexual, then you will have responses along the lines of “oh, well, but if you like both the opposite sex and the same sex you can go back home and just be with someone of the opposite sex”, that simple (Jules, staff member at ILGA-Europe).

Laurie Berg and Jenni Millbank (2013) have explained the harm done by miscategorising trans asylum claims as a subset of sexual orientation claims, resulting in trans invisibility and the inappropriate application of COI. Similar harm is caused by homogenising all SOGI claims based on stereotypes of gay men’s experiences: the persecutory experiences of lesbian women, bisexual men and women, and trans people are obscured, and appropriate COI is neither sourced nor adequately used for these groups (Chaps. 6 and 7). In the UK, for example, women from countries where only male same-sex behaviour is criminalised may encounter problems. Meggs (UK) told us how unexpected this was at her first appeal when she was told [Meggs’ words]: ‘Ok, even if you are gay in Zimbabwe, it is legal for women to be gay according to law, but it is illegal for male.…’ While women’s experiences are often ignored, as in this example, they may also be heard but used to undermine a claim, as is typically the case where women have been married – often through a forced marriage – or had children:

There is also that problem of… if you come from countries where young marriages or forced marriages are common, then you have issues like… I mean the recent very prominent case in, recent, long on-going case in the UK with Aderonke… where her claims of being a lesbian were doubted because she was once married and had kids, but that fails to recognise the local context of the country of origin that in many cases people don’t have a choice (Jules, staff member at ILGA-Europe).

Women also told us about their pain at being separated from their children and how an important motive in securing refugee status was to then be able to bring their children to Europe to join them through family reunion (Meggs, UK; Stephina, UK): ‘It was the most difficult thing for me to leave my daughter because I love her to death like, every fibre in me appreciates that I have got a child as brilliant as she is’ (Stephina, UK).

2.2 Stereotypes

These experiences of the harsh impact of asylum rules are only one example of why the category of SOGI asylum needs to be disaggregated to recognise the different paths and needs of different individuals within this grouping. Following our theoretical frameworks (Chap. 3), here we consider it in relation to the complex layering of stereotypes, norms and expectations displayed by decision-makers and which affect their decision-making. An example of this is the case of Zena, UK, where the judge in her first appeal did not find her credible because:

Although [Zena] has a slightly “mannish” appearance, I place no real weight on that, in determining whether she is reasonably likely to be a lesbian, if only because

  1. (a)

    That slightly “mannish” appearance was substantially attributable to the manner in which her hair was cut and the fact that she wore no (or very little) “make up” and, to a degree, to her age (she is now 39 years old),

  2. (b)

    The manner in which [Zena’s] hair was cut and her appearance are (obviously) very much matters over which she has substantial control,

  3. (c)

    [Zena] is not a large, muscular and/or well-built woman, but, on the contrary, is slightly built, so that her appearance is not striking, and

  4. (d)

    since her claim to asylum is based on the contention that she is a lesbian, it would not be surprising if, whether or not she is, in reality, a lesbian, she would take steps to ensure that, at the hearing of her appeal, her appearance was consistent with her claim.

Nor do I place any weight on [Zena’s] evidence that, when she had been c. 14 or 15 years old, she had had a brief lesbian relationship with a school friend, [name], a relationship which, on the basis of what [Zena] stated, lasted only c. 3 weeks at or about the [month] holiday in 1996. Many young women (and young men) at that age are confused about their sexuality. The fact (if fact it be) that at that age (or even slightly older) they involve themselves in homosexual activities with other young women (in the case of women) or young men (in the case of young men) says nothing of any consequence about whether 20 years or more later they are homosexuals (whether male or female) (First Tier Tribunal, London, 2018, decision paper).

Zena’s case was first discussed in Chap. 7, but this passage is worth quoting in full because it brings together a number of different assumptions based on gender, age, sexuality and culture or country of origin. Zena’s claim depended on her credibility as a lesbian, as so many claims do. The judge deconstructed her appearance and manner to argue that she could safely return because, whether or not she was a lesbian, she did not need to look like one: she was ‘mannish’ but at the same time had a small physique, so with a more feminine haircut could avoid persecution. This stereotype is (hetero)sexist but also culturally specific, based on Western portrayals of a typical lesbian appearance. As a matter of legal accuracy, there is no evidence that such stereotypes are prevalent in the East African country of origin in this case, meaning there is no evidence that this is relevant to how Zena would be perceived if she were returned. Similarly, the assumption that young people are ‘confused’ about their sexuality and flirt with homosexuality is another culturally-specific trope. Finally, Zena’s age is used against her as a further reason why her ‘mannish’ appearance would not reveal her to be a lesbian; she would simply be seen as old. In addition, her age would mean that her single childless status would not attract attention:

If [Zena] were returned to Kenya, she would (plainly) not live with a husband or male “partner” and she would have no dependent children. But I am not satisfied that those facts would lean any person who did not know her, or her history, to conclude that she was, or might be, a lesbian. Widowhood and marital breakdown are by no means uncommon. Because [Zena] is now c. 39 years old, the fact that she has no dependent children is not reasonably likely to cause questions to be asked, or suspicions to arise (she is of an age at which formerly dependent children might themselves have grown up) (First Tier Tribunal, London, 2018, decision paper).

The implication here is that, in Kenya, for a young woman, having dependent children is evidence that one is not a lesbian, while for a woman in her thirties this is not the case. No evidence to support these assumptions is given in the decision paper. We have already heard that the Home Office may find it harder to believe older people are gay (Chap. 7). One plausible reason for this is that stereotypes for the LGBTIQ+ community in the UK rarely depict older people, so there are no templates for decision-makers to use when assessing the credibility of an older person.

Zena’s case also highlights the particular susceptibility of SOGI claimants where a number of different stereotypes – not only based on SOGI – come together in a system so heavily dependent on ‘credibility’, which is, at the end of the day, an individual judgment. It also shows how gender and sexuality are intrinsically linked (Chap. 3). In fact, the extreme prejudice showed by this judge ultimately worked to Zena’s advantage. This decision was appealed and the judge found to have materially erred and failed to apply the guidance in the Equal Treatment Bench Book. However, a fair system should not allow decisions to be made on the basis of such biases in the first place.

Moreover, Zena’s case was just one example of the humiliating and demeaning nature of the appeal process for some SOGI claimants and the way SOGI claims are managed, particularly when, on appeal, they reach the sometimes public arena of a courtroom (Sect. 6.4 of Chap. 6). It is difficult to think of another situation where an individual who has not been charged with a crime may find themselves in a courtroom with lawyers and government representatives debating across them whether they are indeed a lesbian, a process in which the claimant generally has little opportunity to speak for themselves.

Many less startlingly egregious examples than the case of Zena remain unchallenged. These relate to characteristics other than sexuality, for example religion, where we found assumptions about the relationship between religious and SOGI minority identities that, again, are culturally specific. As discussed in Chap. 7, and as one of our survey respondents explained: ‘Applicants whose religions are generally intolerant of sexual minorities are expected to provide an intellectual explanation for their own faith. If they cannot do so their claims are then liable to be rejected as incredible’ (S4, lawyer, UK).

Ibrahim A. (UK) explained how religion was addressed in his main Home Office interview:

[the interviewer] asked if I am consider myself religious and I just answered her “what do you mean by religious?” Because there is not something called like, there is no blue print of religious. (…) it is differs from a person to another. And then she asked me a very specific questions: “are you praying five times a day?” I was like, “I used to, but not now.” “Were you going to mosques regularly?” I told her, “well, I used to, but not now.” Ok, at some point I felt like she was profiling me if I am an extremist (laughs) or something like that.

However, Ibrahim A.’s solicitor explained to him that was not the case. She told him:

they thought that if you are truly gay, you will have this … LGBT, you will have this kind of … internal discussion between your sexual orientation and your religion and if you didn’t have it, so you are not serious enough about what you are doing. So that was her questions I guess about… she asked me about practicing, prayers, she asked me about going to mosques, I don’t remember if she asked me about fasting or not … then she asked me about how do, how do Islam look to the LGBT and gays, and I told her, “well, there are many opinions on that, it depends on the interpretation of the text itself”.

What we encountered were assumptions about identity that influenced decision-makers and acted as a barrier, preventing SOGI claims from being heard as individual narratives without the imposition of culturally specific assumptions about how SOGI claimants behave depending on whether they are gay or lesbian, young or old, male or female, Muslim or Christian, etc. As Jules (staff member at ILGA-Europe) told us, in every country we can find:

this Westernised perception of what it is to be homosexual. And that you have to behave in a certain way and you have to act in a certain way, and if you don’t live up to these expectations, then you are viewed as not being credible.

Jules pointed out that this is harmful in two ways: it reinforces stereotypes and forces people to perform their SOGI. As Ibrahim (Germany) explained: ‘I told them what they want to hear [in an asylum interview]. Because they want to hear violence, discrimination, your fears of going back, your prostitution’. This corresponds to the concerns in the literature on homonationalism (Chap. 3), and generates a cyclical process where claimants are encouraged to conform to the culturally-specific and heteronormativestereotypes that decision-makers impose upon them in order to maximise the chances of a successful claim.

2.3 Language and Culture

The requirement to conform to a particular narrative is more difficult for some claimants than others. Language and interpretation issues were explored in Chap. 6, but what might be described as cross-cultural differences are not always easy to pin down, particularly when they come up against the hard certainties of legal systems.

Rudi (UK), whose case was first touched on when we discussed the notion of PSG (Sect. 7.2.2 of Chap. 7) did not identify as transgender when he first came to the UK, but as a lesbian. His Upper Tribunal appeal was partly based on the fact that although he no longer identified as a lesbian, because of his birth-assigned gender, he would be perceived to be a lesbian in his country of origin – Kenya. The appeal succeeded because in this instance the Upper Tribunal judge was sensitive to the specificities of the case, and it was held that the judge in his First Tier Tribunal appeal had failed to take into account ‘the evidence documenting the risks to transgender men or to women perceived to be masculine lesbians, and also failed to take into account crucial evidence, setting out the unique risks which faced a transgender man or a lesbian woman perceived to be masculine’ (Upper Tribunal, London, 2018, decision paper, para. 8). However the case, in which attributions of SOGI – as well as the claimant’s self-definition – changed over time, shows how difficult it is for asylum law to capture individual identity through permanent labels such as ‘lesbian’. As Cristina (UNHCR officer, Italy) pointed out, ‘very often it happens that trans people talk about sexual orientation rather than gender identity, or they define themselves as gay or as lesbians’. Most importantly, it shows why the question of whether claimants are ‘truly’ members of a SOGI minority should be recognised as redundant, not only because SOGI is fluid and complex, but also because identity, regardless of SOGI, is never definitively fixed. SOGI identities in the context of asylum, as in many other contexts, are negotiated in the context of the state, of the surrounding environments, and through personal relationships. Furthermore, identification may evolve in a process of intense ‘subjectivation’, in other words, transformation by one’s own practices (Fassin and Salcedo 2015, p. 1124).

The relationship between identity and the language used to describe identity came up in several accounts. Roberto (decision-maker, Italy) explained that:

a young man who speaks Wolof, who was born and raised speaking Wolof, he does not have a term to self-identify that is not an insult. I continuously hear guys who can’t get to an awareness of themselves, because they can’t, there is no “coming out from the closet”… because there aren’t even “closets”.

Similarly, and as mentioned in Chap. 6, we heard from Celeste, a social worker in Italy, about a client’s self-description:

It was not “I am” or “I was lesbian” but “I do lesbian”, as if it were a practice … there is no awareness of “I am this”. I mean, I’m doing it, it’s what I do… rather than what I am.

The differences in how SOGI identity are experienced across cultures and countries were also analysed by Ashley (psychotherapist, UK):

I know from gay Iranian friends, for example, but also clients that I have worked with, that the issue of trans and gay might be conflated because of one is more acceptable than the other, rather than the powerful attachment of identity choices and features that goes with some of the Western levels of identity.

As these reports illustrate, an asylum system that requires claimants to deploy the language and terminology for SOGI minorities used in European societies will unfairly fail to recognise the very real but different ways that they experience or are threatened with persecution. As Allan (lawyer, UK) described the situation:

You have got some languages and cultures where they don’t have a concept of being gay. The concept of having sex with your own sex might exist, but the concept of being gay doesn’t, so often you get this confusion about what that is. If it [is] not confusion, it is disbelief. You often get clients who say that they only realised they were gay when they came to the UK, even though they may have had a relationship in their country of origin or at least sexual encounters. Then there is this confusion. The Home Office will say, “You couldn’t have realised you were gay when you came here because you were having sex in Pakistan.” No, they didn’t realise they were gay. It’s not really a concept. That is in loads of countries. That is Pakistan, Bangladesh. Less so in the African countries, but also in the African countries. Cameroon, etc., it is not really a concept as much as we have it here. Here you have got identity politics. There it is not seen as an identity. There is a clash there.

This experience of sexuality as behaviours rather than claimed identities is in tension with the expectation by decision-makers that claimants describe a journey of self-discovery, or have gone through a process of awareness and self-acceptance (Jansen 2019, p. 168; Wessels 2016). Yet, as we saw in Chap. 7, not all participants can provide such an account of sexual self-discovery in the emotional or sentimental terms that decision-makers want to hear. Giulia (LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy) described this in the context of questioning by the Commission:

So, they often ask him “when did you understand?”, “do you remember how it was when you realised you were homosexual?” Because young men tend to tell when it was their first homosexual sexual experience. So always facts and not feelings. From this point of view, however, the Commission tries to investigate the path of discovery with the Western mentality.

On the receiving end of such expectations, Ibrahim A. (UK) told us about a particular line of questioning by his Home Office interviewer who found it difficult to comprehend that a relationship he had had with a classmate had been based entirely on sex:

Somehow she didn’t accept that. She asked me like, I stayed with him like two years, and she was like “how come two years you don’t know what he is interested in?” And at this point actually when I get very, I have to say upset, I just told her, “I need to explain something, I just was meeting him for sex, and that is it. Outside this I was just his classmate”.

As the success of SOGI claims appears increasingly to depend on articulating an internal and emotional journey to decision-makers, those who are not equipped with the language (and cultural) skills to do that are more likely to fail. In Chap. 7 we highlighted the prohibition on sexually explicit material in evidence as a positive development in European and domestic law and policy. There is no question that this is a welcome change, however, it corresponds to the privileging in its place of a particular kind of account of gaypersecution based on the claimant’s inner life and not their outer behaviour – and not everyone can provide this account.

In the above accounts, a common factor is the contrast between the reality of sexuality and gender identity as experienced by our participants and the desire on the part of officials to discover a claimant’s ‘true’ identity – gay or dissembling – once and for all. Also apparent from the above accounts is the often demeaning way in which this process takes place, through interrogating people about their earliest and most personal experiences, which are often then discredited and devalued.

Several participants described cultural communication problems as having a particular bearing on SOGI claims, because of their inevitable focus on sexual activity:

I remember the silly question that they asked me and it is still on my refusal is that, “when the police came in, what were you doing?” I said, “I was sleeping with my partner”. [She] Said, “oh, you were sleeping with your partner”, I said, “yes, I was sleeping with my partner, naked, you know”. I couldn’t say we were having sexual intercourse, I was still holding back on that thing that, you know, so on my refusal they said, “she said they were just sleeping. So, as girl child or they can just sleep as friends” (Meggs, UK).

Meggs went on to say: ‘So, most of the times, the most important information you just withhold out of respect, out of cultural beliefs, out of the way you have been raised but not intentionally’. Gary confirmed this:

I am not sure sometimes if the interviewer gives due weight to how difficult it is for people from some cultures to talk about sexuality. I mean, I don’t just mean about being gay or lesbian, but about anything to do with sex really. And I think it is not in, like, African culture, you don’t particularly talk about it in your families or anything. That is certainly true of Pakistan, I think, so I think sometimes people [claimants] say, you know, “I met somebody and he was a very nice person”, and then people [decision-makers] say “well, that is not a sexual relationship” in their report. So, I think being a little bit more aware of the cultural reticence and, I mean, I am always saying to people I know it is really difficult, but you are just going to have to say what you mean (Gary, NGO worker, UK).

Many of the legal and NGO advisors we spoke to explained that they told their clients and members how important it is to be open about their experiences precisely because they understood how difficult this would be in two ways: first, the very natural reluctance to talk about subjects often seen as private, and more likely to be seen as such in many of the countries from which SOGI claimants come; second, the understandable fear that many people will have about sharing with officials the kind of information that they have tried to keep concealed for years.

As well as misunderstandings and misrecognition based on culture, there were also difficulties for people who, for whatever reason, simply rejected the kinds of identity labels that they needed to embrace for the purposes of claiming asylum. A focus group participant in Germany described herself as an ‘immigrant’, not a refugee:

Watching the television and you see refugees, you see flies all over them, they’re barefooted, they’re dirty, they’re malnourished and that’s what we see in Jamaica as refugees. That’s what we see on our TV screens when we hear about refugees, you know? I came to Germany well-dressed. When I see refugees on the TV, they just throw on something, they’re in boats for days. I rode comfortably in a plane. You know? Lufthansa. Slept all night, and stuff like that (Sandy, focus group no. 1, Hesse, Germany).

Christina (UK) had gradually come to identify as non-binary, but was relaxed about identifiers: ‘I don’t have a problem with pronouns so I use male and female pronouns. I have also got a female person which is Christina. She / he, I am not fussed. I am ok with pronouns’. As we saw in Chap. 7, both Sandra and Christina would be well-advised to avoid such thoughtful questioning of identity categories, at least until their credibility is established in the eyes of decision-makers.

While this section has considered the complexities of identity and identifiers in SOGI-based asylum claims, the next section identifies the experiences of discrimination and prejudice that our participants had experienced in different contexts and at different times in their journeys to and in Europe.

3 Discrimination

Many of our participants shared with us overt experiences of discrimination and hostility. We look at these experiences first in terms of discrimination by the host community and then in terms of discrimination within the diaspora community, with the proviso, however, that ‘host’ and ‘diaspora’ are not discrete categories and that this may be increasingly true over time as individuals who were once asylum claimants settle and take on roles in policy and service provision within the ‘host’ community to support a later cohort of claimants.

3.1 Racism

Discrimination was often experienced in terms of racism as well as homophobia or transphobia. In a focus group in Germany, Jackie told us:

Well, yeah, it makes you think before exposing yourself, because you are cautioning yourself. I am Black and I am gay, so it’s like you can’t expose yourself. So racism is like, it’s racism. But as for me, yeah, there is… I mean, you cannot be in a White man’s land for even a year and you don’t experience a little bit of racism. That won’t happen. And maybe it is like on a train or something, you go and sit down, there are German people, White people, sitting in front of you. They will get up and change seats, you know? So it happens. But as long as no-one is hurting me physically, I just look at it and move on (focus group no. 2, Bavaria, Germany).

And Halim in Germany was worried about racist attacks and right-wing politics:

Now that I can read German and I read the news, I’m really scared sometimes. Recently there was this demo against AfD [Alternative für Deutschland, extreme right-wing party] and it was really nice to see all the people show up against it, but yeah, I don’t know.

Angel’s descriptions of some of her school-age daughter’s experiences were also distressing: ‘Oh God. She has been called a “Black bitch”. She have been called [the N-word]. She have been called a monkey. She have been standing at the bus stop and a football was kicked on her purposely’ (Angel, Germany). Her daughter was not the only child from an asylum or refugee background at the school; however, she was the only one who was Black.

Similarly, Stephen (Germany) had the unpleasant experience of realising that his presence was unwelcome and that he was viewed with suspicion:

Then another very bad experience was in winter, I was at a bus stop. Now, a lady came with a “Kinderwagen” [baby pram] [baby pram] and she had two kids. One was seated in the “Kinderwagen”, and another one was playing. It was a bus stop. So when I moved towards the front to check the time, so I went towards her. The closer I moved that was when she was showing me, she was holding a handbag and pulling the “Kinderwagen” towards her and calling the kids. You know, kids always play and go to an extent, so I was like looking at the kid now. I realised there was something happening to the mum, and the mum was like calling the kid away. To me, I didn’t take it like something that was serious, but then after two or three minutes I understood that my presence there was causing a discomfort to them. So what happened was, I had to leave the bus stop and move, like, some metres away. And immediately the bus came and they were the first people to enter inside. To tell you the truth, I didn’t enter that bus.

In Italy, as well, Kamel had a bad experience at his third Pride event in Bologna, where two girls shouted ‘go back to your home’ and someone else shouted ‘Viva Salvini’ [leader of extreme right-wing party]. Also in Italy, Alain A. had become used to discrimination:

Living in Italy as a Black, you face many difficulties first. So many, many, many difficulties as a Black. I have never been discriminated as an LGBT but as a Black, yes. Normally you face discrimination every day as a Black even on the buses, so it is not even something I talk about again because it is just like a normal way of life, but I think with time things will change.

In the UK, Mary and Zaro had eggs thrown at the exterior of their accommodation and ‘Fuck you’ written on their door while their application was pending. There were several accounts of people moving away from asylum claimants on buses, trains and in public spaces (also mentioned in Chap. 8), including C49, a survey respondent in the UK, who wrote: ‘Most of the time especially in the trains people rather stand than sit next to you’.

Some of our participants reported being targeted because they were Black, and some because they were Black and gay: ‘You face two things at a go, you are Black and you are gay…’ (Alphaeus, Germany); ‘One old woman in the S-Bahn [suburban train], they say “Blacks are smelling” [laughter]’ (Mayi, focus group no. 4, Bavaria, Germany). And again in Germany, Liz said ‘I think us Blacks, the way they are treating us is very different from the way they treat the Asians’ (Liz, focus group no. 5, Bavaria, Germany).

While racism was common in our participants’ accounts, equally, they endured homophobic and transphobic abuse that was often not only distressing but also frightening as recounted in the next Section.

3.2 Homophobia, Transphobia and Cross-Cutting Discrimination

Alongside overt racism, SOGI minorities claiming asylum shared their experiences of different kinds of hostility and harassment. These occurred in public and social spaces and were not necessarily connected to status as an asylum claimant or refugee, as Amber’s experiences highlight:

[Location X] is kind of creepy actually. I was cornered several times when I went for a walk, like I was crossing a road and there was a car that came and then stopped me from crossing and then the driver gestured me to come inside his car. I was in a quiet neighbourhood, so that was a bit scary. Then you get people calling you names sometimes, when you walk in public. I was walking with one of my housemates and she identify as non-binary, and she does attract attention and I experience weird interactions from strangers with her. But, I think that can happen anywhere (Amber, UK).

Janelle (UK) had had at least two unpleasant homophobic and transphobic experiences:

I was walking on the streets in Sheffield, and a guy was driving and he wanted to know what is my identity and he was like, “are you a boy or a girl?” So I just started walking faster. And I had this particular time I was going to the grocery store and there were like two Jamaican kids, and they were using like terms like batty man and like faggot and stuff…

We were also told of varying degrees of unfriendliness and exclusion from within LGBTIQ+ spaces in the host countries. Ibrahim, in Germany, said that, ‘[f]or example, we have this issue here in Cologne. A lot of gay people are not allowed to go to them [LGBTIQ+ venues] because they are brown-skinned’. in Italy, LGBTIQ+ group volunteer Giulio said: ‘I have never had so much discomfort entering an LGBT night club as much as when I entered with a Black person. I mean, it seemed like it was bad, bad because I’m White dancing with a Black…’.

We also heard of discrimination within UK LGBTIQ+ communities:

There is still racial discrimination in some parts of the UK LGBTQ+ community. There is also still [a] drink/drug culture in parts of the LGBTQ+ community, including issues around chemsex etc, that would make it difficult for LGBTQ+ refugees to integrate into the LGBTQ+ community here (S83)

A number of accounts were of discrimination by other asylum claimants. This is not surprising, as thei main day-to-day contact for most SOGI claimants will be with other asylum claimants. In such cases, hostility and discrimination tended to be on the basis of SOGI. For example, Chloe, a worker with a refugee women’s organisation, described how the women using the service had started a choir. Chloe said:

I run the choir and everybody loves the choir and it is a really big part of the drop-ins and we sing at various different events and it is really great, and we were singing at a Pride event, or we got invited to a Pride event, and… when we told the choir what it was, none of them wanted to do it. And that was just really shocking. And upsetting. Because I just had no idea, which was so naïve of me. And nobody turned up. And we couldn’t explore it because they didn’t want to talk about it.

In Chap. 8 we described some experiences of discrimination in shared accommodation. We heard accounts of hostility from flat or house mates from Trudy Ann and Alphaeus in Germany, Ken and Kennedy in Italy, Meggs and Lutfor in the UK, among others. A survey participant stated: ‘My roommate told me face to face that he wished all gay people would be denied asylum and that he wished the worse for all of us, a statement that can never go off my mind’ (C38, Germany). One NGO worker at an LGBTIQ+ organisation also told us that they sensed the ‘gay village’ [in Manchester] was quite racist: ‘They don’t really want them [asylum claimants] here’ (Caroline, NGO worker, UK). According to one survey respondent:

In 2016 July, me and some gay friends of mine were denied entrance to one gay club in Munich because we were Blacks. They first claimed that three of us didn’t have the membership card like the one issued at SUB [gay communication- and culturecentre Munich] (S36, Germany).

It is possible to generalise to some degree about types and sources of discrimination, as Nicola (LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy) did: ‘SOGI [minorities] are discriminated outside the cooperative [camp] because they are Black and within the cooperative [camp] because they are gay, among other refugees’. Diane, in Germany, expressed it differently: ‘I also get transphobia here. In Iran, too, is transphobia, but here is transphobia with racism about it’. She had been turned away by a lesbian counsellor who told her ‘You are not a woman’; she found that the White trans community also had no interest in trans refugees. Likewise, Kamel (Italy) told us: ‘So, I’m a trans, but nobody thinks I’m trans; I am a refugee and of colour’. These comments highlight the peculiar situation of many SOGI claimants and refugees who experience abuse on the basis of different aspects of their identities which they, and their abusers, may not always be able to distinguish. While in some places and contexts asylum claimants’ identity as part of a SOGI minority would be the target of hostility, at other times it would be their ethnicity, but there was also a perception of a specific dislike of migrants, perhaps even specifically of refugees. Failing to recognise these intersections leads to failures to recognise the totality of individuals’ experiences, as highlighted in Chap. 3.

As soon as one looks at participants’ accounts of experiencing discrimination and harassment, it is clear that they – like anyone else – cannot enter the mind of their harasser to identify the grounds on which they have been targeted. Is it because they are Black, gay, a woman, Muslim, a refugee, short, fat, young, some, all or none of these? In any case, it is beyond doubt that the experience of being member of a SOGI minority seeking asylum in Europe makes individuals more exposed to abuse in various ways. As Julian (focus group no. 5, Bavaria, Germany) said: ‘And also when you’re under the refugee status, and you add the word “lesbian”, then you are Black… me, I’m being realistic [laughing]. It’s like, you’ve killed yourself with three bullets at once. That’s the fact’.

The experiences of discrimination that our participants recounted varied significantly depending on their location, showing how important a factor ‘place’ is, both within and outside the decision-making process.

4 Place

The previous chapters have highlighted notable variations in the three countries under comparison, including variations in the treatment of SOGI claims and in the wider social experiences of individuals claiming asylum on these grounds. In understanding why wide variations persist despite many regulations and measures designed to facilitate consistency, we look back to Chap. 3, where we used queer geographies to highlight how focusing on space can help us to understand SOGI asylum experiences – space understood from macro to micro level.

4.1 Receiving Country and Region

In understanding persistent variations in decision-making and non-legal experiences in the face of attempts to facilitate consistency, we look back to Chap. 3, where we used queer geographies to highlight how focusing on space can help us to understand SOGI asylum experiences – space understood from macro to micro level. Our fieldwork affirmed the value of thinking in this way, as we saw how both country of origin and host country determined people’s experiences, with applications relating to particular countries treated with greater scepticism than others (Chap. 6). We have compared the policies, laws and practices that deal with SOGI asylum in each country (Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7) and in the sections above we show how country of origin combines with SOGI to create different trajectories for individuals. Nonetheless, where claimants settle or are settled within each country is equally important both to the outcome of their claim and to their broader experiences as we consider here.

Despite key asylum instruments being defined by the central authorities in all three of our case study countries, participants reported regional differences in decision-making and wider support that inevitably affect the likelihood of a claimant’s claim succeeding. In Germany, one participant identified ‘huge differences’ between courts: ‘I would say that with these, the cases that I’m negotiating about Chechens in Berlin, of which I win many here, I do not win in – I would not win all those in Frankfurt (Oder) and Potsdam’ (Barbara, lawyer). Regional differences were also visible in relation to support outside the asylum decision-making process. Frank S. (legal advisor) explained that in Germany there is still much progress to be made across the country:

Well, let’s just say that basically I think Berlin is already halfway well positioned in terms of financial resources and counselling services, but of course [it] is a very big problem that other federal states are not equipped with a counselling infrastructure with special accommodation or housing offers or queer shelter ready or queer shared flats.

There were two specific concerns in Bavaria: one was the lack of state-supported sheltered accommodation for SOGI refugees and the other was the state government’s reluctance to authorise work permits (Thomas, NGO volunteer, Germany). In contrast, asylum claimants in Saxony are likely to receive more comprehensive support, perhaps surprisingly, given the incidence of racist hate crime reported in this area (AFP 2019):

Saxony, so if you are a queer refugee and come to Saxony, then everything is actually secured. (…) they are all sent to Dresden, queer refugees, there is a street in Dresden, since the 23 apartments have been rented for the accommodation of queer refugees. And that is all organised by the community through the CSD [LGBTIQ+] club Dresden (Knud, NGO worker).

In Italy, distinctions were made between the services and expertise available to SOGI claimants in Calabria and Emilia-Romagna (Titti, decision-maker), and Damiano, a lawyer, told us that ‘[t]hose who come to the centre [of Italy] are luckier, especially in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, all in all in Liguria, in certain areas of Lombardy and Piedmont’.

In the UK, immigration (including asylum) is a reserved matter, meaning that policy is made centrally and not devolved to any of the UK’s constituent nations. Yet, approaches to integration do vary within the four nations (Chap. 4). For example, Scotland’s ‘New Scots’ strategy states explicitly: ‘The key principle of the New Scots strategy is that refugees and asylum seekers should be supported to integrate into communities from day one of arrival, and not just once leave to remain has been granted’ (Scottish Government2018, p. 11). In this light, we heard that while the asylum policy structure and immigration rules are the same across the UK, there may be differences in how officials engage with external partners:

So I have engaged in a number of forums where… we have Scottish asylum seekers forum that SRC [the Scottish Refugee Council] co-chair with myself, so we have that. We have the new Scots forum, new Scots integration forum, so I’m involved in I think probably every one of the strands of the new Scots integration forum. So, we are very visible and we are very willing to engage (Olivia, government official, UK).

There are no official statistics on LGBTIQ+ asylum claims (other than the UK’s ‘experimental’ data) and consequently there are no published statistics for decisions on SOGI claims at a regional level. Nor are there figures available on the concentration or dispersal of SOGI claimants to different parts of Germany, Italy or the UK. It is therefore not possible to analyse differences in acceptances and refusals based on location within each country. Nonetheless, as highlighted here, interviews with NGO workers and volunteers and with lawyers in each country suggest significant differences do exist within each country.

It is easier to demonstrate the personal and social impact of location for individuals if we consider whether they moved or were moved to a city or large town, or to a small town or village. In none of our countries was SOGI a consideration in where people were sent or accommodated by the authorities (Chaps. 5 and 8). The impact of living in a rural or remote location was particularly striking in Germany, as discussed in Chap. 8. One participant told us: ‘I feel like a fish out of water, I’m the only lesbian in [small locality] as far as I see it. When I hear about a lesbian group, it’s either in Frankfurt, in Kassel, in Fritzlar, in somewhere’ (Sandy, focus group no. 1, Hesse, Germany).

Marhen (Germany) was asked about gay life in Saaarbrucken and whether it was possible to integrate into the gay community. He said: ‘No, here most of them speak only German. And the ones I met who spoke English, there is a socialising code that I couldn’t crack’. At 37, age was a further barrier: ‘And to find gay Germans my age who share similar interests… no. There is [NGO X], but then [NGO Y], all of them are in their twenties’.

In Italy, better services and support are available in cities such as Bologna (Anna, LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy). Similarly, in Milan, for two men to walk hand-in-hand would be acceptable in a way that it would not be elsewhere (Livio, lawyer, Italy). In the UK, Ibrahim A. contrasted the environment at the university where he was studying with that of the nearest town:

my experiences wasn’t nice, because the campus is very international environment and it is kind of isolated from the city, it’s on the borders of the town, the town or the city. And the town is conservative, White, people were still giving you the looks of like how you look like if you are different person. Sometime I was getting like the feeling like that we are not belong to here, we are not speaking English the same way I am speaking. I was getting this a lot from the bus drivers, in specific. If I am asking to go to specific station and I am not pronouncing it the right accent, that he is using too, he claim he doesn’t understand me. It happened many times that other people on the bus, British, like tell him he said this station. And then he just understands (Ibrahim A., UK).

It is unsurprising that people we interviewed found it easier to ‘settle’, make friends, and become part of communities in cities and large towns than they did in rural locations and smaller conurbations, and that location was a significant factor in whether or not they reported feelings of isolation.

4.2 Isolation

The impacts of isolation and dispersal were a recurrent feature in our participants’ accounts:

I mean, you have cities where there is a big group that is organising support for LGBTI asylum seekers, that you know is also specifically looking at their stories, at the traumatisation, the traumas they might have, at the specific needs they might also have, that is integrating them into the community in the city, they are sometimes or often at least in Germany also supported by the state, but then you have places where if you are sent there, there is nothing. Yes and you are really like looking into the void (Terry, member of the European Parliament).

As well as the personal and emotional impact of living in a small town without established LGBTIQ+, migrant, or LGBTIQ+ migrant communities, there is a very practical implication for individuals in terms of their application. One survey respondent summed up the combination of problems experienced in this context:

Recently I have come across many cases of LGBT+ people seeking asylum had been dispersed to areas which are not diverse and there is no LGBT+ community and that has had an enormous impact on their mental health and in proving their case and Home office want to know if they had been to any LGBT+ bars or clubs since coming to UK (S145, Community Development Worker, UK).

Such expectations from decision-makers were explored and found problematic in Chap. 7. Anna’s account of how this affected the work of NGOs reiterated such concerns:

[T]he most difficult problem that we are sincerely meeting to integrate, at the level of inclusion, is that these guys are scattered, lost in places that are not reachable by public transport. Obviously, they are not equipped with their own vehicles and they are badly connected with the cities where we generally do events, we organise events. So what happens? That we have a problem. Even if they can come, then they don’t know how to get back (Anna, LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy).

We were told about a young Syrian refugee who had been dispersed to Northern Ireland with his family, but who was not ‘out’ to his family. He was getting support from LGBTIQ+ organisations locally, but keeping that part of his life separate from his family relations (Lucas, NGO worker, UK). Given the absence of dedicated SOGI asylum support groups and networks outside of the main cities in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), it is likely that claimants in other locations will find it expedient to compartmentalise their lives as this young man has done, seeking different kinds of support from different and unconnected networks and organisations. In this way, we can see that some individuals feel forced to fragment their identities, having very few spaces available to be open about their identity. This is more likely to be the case for individuals dispersed to areas where there is no LGBTIQ+ asylum support network, but it was a wider phenomenon, and we now address these experiences of isolation, whether physical or mental, externally or self-imposed.

While for some people feelings of isolation corresponded to and were shaped be their remote location, others experienced a sense of separation and inability to be themselves in the world despite living in a city and in constant contact with others. Chloe, working for a women’s refugee NGO in a large city in the UK, told us she thought there were women using their general services who were not open about their sexuality because of their need for support from the network. Justina (NGO worker, UK) told us something similar: ‘And they might not be out, they might be seeking asylum, but are not out and they may never be because actually it is more important for them to have that network within the cultural and / or faith’.

There were also very practical reasons why claimants felt unable to be open about their SOGI: ‘for me, because I’ve not been accepted, I don’t want to tell all the world that I am a lesbian, [in case] tomorrow I am sent back to my country’ (Juliet, Germany). Similarly, Halim, also in Germany, did not tell the people in his accommodation that he was gay:

I kept a distance from people. I always ate on my own, there were always groups of people… Yeah, I didn’t really, I just tried to maintain a distance because I was worried about what could happen. I was worried that people would start to ask me a lot of questions.

Ashley (psychotherapist, UK) told us of similar experiences of isolation that many people have because they live with people who – for religious or cultural reasons – would not offer practical support to a SOGI claimant:

[these SOGI asylum claimants] find themselves in the new “closet” of not talking about their cases in the asylum accommodations that they have (…) with all the limitations that any asylum seeker has of access to life in the UK, it becomes even more problematic to access a life in the UK for someone LGBTQI with all the risks that goes on, with the costs that goes on with it as well. So it is incredibly isolating.

Alongside this, many of our participants were keen that their experiences be used to support others in their situation in combatting isolation. In this respect, Christina (UK) told us that:

a lot of people go through what I am going through and they feel really alone, nobody to talk to, especially if you are going through asylum and you have, you are getting support, you feel alone, you don’t have any friends, you can’t really pick yourself up and say “you know what, I am going to go to a gay pub and sit and try to make some friends”, because you barely get enough money to survive, much alone go and have a drink. Just find organisations that help people in the situation, reach out, talk to people, make friends, you will feel a lot better. Don’t just stay at home and be depressed like what I did.

In contrast, one very positive spatial dimension for some SOGI claimants was the strong affection for and sense of identification that they developed with their new home area. This was particularly true in the UK. Daphne said she wanted to stay in Manchester ‘forever’ and Luc told us ‘Glasgow is the best place to live’. Jayne, as well, said that ‘I love it [Birmingham]. When I first came, it was a little town [I came from], it was so overwhelming I did not like it, but I have grown to like it and it is… a very friendly city’ (Jayne, UK). Similarly, Amos (focus group no. 5, Nottingham, UK) said that:

Nottingham itself has been quite amazing, because I am even able to run in the morning without fearing and it is maybe dark at around 5, and I am running, jogging that there is no one who will harm me.

Similar accounts were shared in Germany and Italy. Odosa (Italy), for example, said: ‘I like Italy, I like Italy seriously’. Halim (Germany) also said that:

I think Berlin as a city offers a lot of great opportunities. I’m a person that enjoys culture and there’s a lot of cultural events, like film, Brazilian film festival for example. A lot of spaces… there’s now much more spaces where queers and not only queers, people of colour are organising. It gives me a lot more spaces and options to move in and to feel comfortable and be myself.

While it is pleasing to be able to end this section on so positive a note, the important point to note about these feelings of attachment to place is that they tend to develop when claimants – whether pre- or post-determination of their claim – are able to develop an identity in their new home. This often corresponds to feeling a sense of agency, and that they are contributing to improving the lives of themselves and others in a similar situation.

5 Agency

The final section of this chapter identifies some of our participants’ experiences relating to agency and lack of agency. By this we mean the ability to act autonomously and in a way that is self-determining (Friedman 2003, pp. 4–5).

5.1 Losing Agency

A very important factor contributing to individuals’ feelings that they had no control over events in their lives was, of course, the length of time they often had to wait for a final decision on their claim, particularly those who needed to go through the appeal process. As explored in Chap. 6, Susanna, a social worker in Italy, told us that what she more often heard from the people with whom she worked and who were appealing against negative decisions was ‘I can’t take it anymore’. She gave the example of one person who had been due to have their appeal in December and it was delayed until July: ‘and he told me over the phone “I can’t wait any longer, I don’t know what to do with my life”’. Claimants feel powerless and deprived of their agency during these long waiting periods.

For people in detention, mainly in the UK, the indeterminate length of their detention was often a specific problem in impeding their access to the sources of advice and information needed to strengthen their claims, but for all asylum claimants, waiting for often unknown and faceless officials to make decisions determining the course of their lives was made more stressful by the uncertainty about how long they would have to wait. In none of the countries studied were precise timeframes for making an initial decision applied and adhered to. For example, a parliamentary question in the UK elicited the fact that in December 2018 more than 12,000 claimants had been waiting for a decision for longer than the Home Office target of 6 months and in May 2019 it was reported that this target had been abandoned (Allison and Taylor 2019).

Prolonged waiting contributes to the dehumanising and sometimes cruel treatment people experience during the asylum process. In Chaps. 6 and 7, we heard of the long probing interviews people, some of whom had experienced rape, had to endure in attempting to establish credibility. We also heard how stressful they find the experience. Some participants had a sense that their life was slipping away from them: ‘Yeah, I feel that at my age I’ve not achieved the things I wanted to achieve. I’m still living in a student area with some young people. I wish to have my own space and be happy’ (Sandra, Germany).

The denial of the right to work in law or in practice – discussed in Chap. 9 – was a further frustration during this waiting period, preventing them from making the kinds of career and life plans that most citizens take for granted in the EU:

I don’t want to be here in Germany and dependent on social [welfare] all the days of my life. No. I want to go out, I want to work, [have] my own money. I want to pay taxes, I’m getting older. I need a pension (Sandy focus group no. 1, Hesse, Germany).

These words were paralleled in a group discussion in the UK:

I need freedom… you can’t, you feel like you are suffocating inside because you are held somewhere in a cage, you can’t do anything, it is about freedom, they just let us free, should have let us live freely like everybody else and you can only feel, live that way if you are able to provide for ourselves. We want more education, the years are going by, so we just don’t want to get, we feel stagnant, you know, we are just stuck there, can’t move right or left (focus group no. 3, London, UK).

While all asylum claimants will suffer from the uncertainty of waiting and it is impossible to quantify this suffering, there will be particular difficulties for SOGI claimants who may not be or feel able to access the kinds of community support that other claimants can.

SOGI claimants we talked to had gone from being dynamic agents instigating change in their lives to being dependents of the asylum system. We asked Angel (Germany) what she did all day and she said: ‘Nothing, I just lay here and smoke’. Shany (Germany) also explained that ‘I used to be like “fleißig” [diligent], like somebody worked very hard, and I can do everything, and I don’t like to have this name, this nickname of “victim”, you know’.

Halim, also in Germany, reiterated similar feelings, saying he felt frustrated and had found his experiences ‘really dehumanising (…) People talk about integration all the time as if it’s just the duty of us. But how do we do it if we’re never seen as equal or never seen as someone who can give back?’ Halim was clear that he was not asking for favours but for protection that he was entitled to and that would enable him to start contributing to society again:

for a person like me, I had a lot of experiences before I moved here. I moved here with like (….) 30 years old, at this point I’ve travelled a lot. I was working, and I perceived this whole asylum thing as for me, claiming my right to asylum and safety. I don’t see it as a gift, as somebody’s giving something I don’t deserve. So I feel that this makes my prospective things a bit different. Because I feel I am entitled to protection and being supported until I become a person who is giving back to society as I’m doing now.

Such awareness of their rights on the part of SOGI claimants was hard to hold onto in the face of often insurmountable obstacles imposed by the asylum system and society more generally. In the UK, for example, Ali found it difficult to gather the evidence he needed for his case without compromising his sense of independence:

it is difficult because I had to ask my friends including not close friends, and to me, in my nature I like to be independent. I don’t like to be dependent on somebody else. I really am always independent so, if I want to do something, the last thing is to ask somebody else or make them involved in my struggles and problem particularly when it is so personal, the first thing would be is to try to do it by my own. But since I had no choice and totally intimidated and fearful of the possibility of being sent back home then I had to make my private and personal life to be an open book and having to open up and also live my past traumas every day throughout the process. Well, I have got close friends who I am happy to actually tell them anything, but still not everyone. I hate being, well, I had so many incidents when I was fallen a victim, though, I hate the word victim. Because me seen as a victim is, as to me it reflects the vulnerability and the weakness that I’m always trying to overcome and since we have no choice but to be strong and brave during the tough times, is not an option in order to survive.

The desire to retain a sense of individual agency and independence is unsurprising in the face of legal and regulatory systems in which all control lies with the decision-maker and is exercised inconsistently: while asylum claimants in all countries must comply with many deadlines (dates on which they need to sign in with the authorities, dates on which they must attend interviews, deadlines for appealing), decision-makers either have no targets for decision-making or breach them with impunity, as in the UK.

The experience of flight and claiming asylum is often portrayed in simple terms, with persecution replaced by security. Yet in contrast with our approach based on a HR reading of the Refugee Convention that was not how our participants necessarily perceived the asylum journey, which very often further damaged their agency. Sandy (focus group no. 1, Hesse, Germany) talked about why some asylum claimants return to their country of origin:

Safety was my issue, why I leave to come here. Not only safety for me, but safety for my child. But I was working, I was living in a city, I could socialise, I could communicate, I could go to the clubs if I wanted to go to the clubs, you know? I could go get ice cream if I want. So even though [now] I’m safe, I still feel in prison.

For Sandy, and others like him, the result of claiming asylum was a trade-off, with some gains and some losses.

5.2 Taking Control

Many of the people we spoke to were trying to achieve what they articulated as freedom – but were restricted as much within the host country as in their country of origin, including in concrete physical ways, for example by camp life in Italy, ruralisolation in Germany, and detention in the UK. In contrast, several participants described ways in which their lives had become freer and they were able to express themselves. Marhoon, in Germany, talked about his changing experience of going to Pride and how he used to act as an agent for change:

And this year I enjoyed it more. The first time, my first gay Pride ever was here in Saarbrucken in Germany and I was so nervous, although I didn’t go in my traditional clothes I had a sign that said “Queer refugees”. (…) this year, I went but this time I decided to go full traditional clothes, to show, not only here in Germany, but also my gay community in Oman, to show them that they’re not alone, that I’m here marching on their behalf. Well, some of them, because for many of them I don’t represent them. I did it, I was nervous again this year, but yeah, again I was fine, nobody harassed or anything.

Janelle (UK) also said that ‘Yes, I am very open with my identity. I don’t hide [it]. I used to hide [it] when I was back home, now I can just be free’. For Amis (focus group no. 2, Bavaria, Germany), freedom and agency were experienced in an ambiguous way. On the one hand:

[T]he best thing is that I am protected and I am free to be who I am. I am out of the closet, I am gay and I am proud to be gay, because even if I walk on the street I tell everyone who I am. If I am with a boy, I kiss him. I feel like, calling him my “boyfriend”, that’s okay.

Yet, at the same time, Amis also acknowledged:

I have that psychological torture. Like, I could say being traumatised, but it’s a torture anyway. Because I am not that free anyway. I am free when I’m in Munich, in that area. But when I’m in my place, I am totally not free.

In general, for those participants who talked about ways in which their lives had improved, this was due to two elements. The first, as Amis’ words show, was living in a country where they were able to be open about their SOGI, usually for the first time, despite the continuing mental trauma. The second was the feeling of strength and agency that people found through their own developing self-confidence and from engaging with others in a similar situation. Christina (UK) explained that:

when I moved here, that’s when I started learning about different things and I always liked dressing up, because I would do back home but secretly and then, now that I have got a wider spectrum to explore here, and a lot more avenues to get information from, that is how I start understanding that I am non-binary.

Rosette (Germany) also felt a sense of freedom:

Nobody is going to take maybe a razor blade to cut me, so that the devil gets out. I will say whatever I want because now I feel that I have a paper which I can show that I’m a free person.

Stephina (UK) also highlighted the importance of the sense of freedom she developed while claiming asylum:

I knew I would be fighting my case, but at least I am outside, I have got that freedom to go places, meet people, hang out with people and because I am coming from a country where you can’t say out loud that you are LGBT and being here, it was like I can breathe. I don’t even have to explain myself. I can date whoever I want to date, go places where I want to go, if I go to a gay bar, whoever sees me I really don’t care, because I didn’t have to explain myself to them. So I think that freedom is what kept me going, even when I knew my case was still going, because you can see from 2014 I just got my stay now [2018], so it has been a journey but (laughs) yes.

These positive accounts may be connected to the confidence and enhanced agency that comes with being aware of rights and how to exercise them. One volunteer described this to us:

I see a radical change between the young people who arrive and contact the association and those who perhaps then leave because they find work somewhere else. The evolution of these people thanks to the group factor (…) is incredible in the awareness of oneself but also in one’s self-confidence (Giulia, LGBTIQ+ group volunteer, Italy).

Meggs (focus group no. 1, Manchester, UK) confirmed this sense of increasing self-confidence that derives from greater rights awareness: ‘I have always been that person who will sit back, but now I have learnt to stand up and fight not only for myself but for other people as well who come after us’. She also had a very clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life:

I want to work with people. I want to work with underprivileged people, and in due time I want to open an organisation back home for young women, because (…) where I grew up no telly in the village, no telly, no Wi-Fi, they know nothing what is happening around the world. So I want an organisation where they will know they are more important, they come first and education is the key, they should not be groomed to be somebody else’s wives, they should have their own decisions and make their own decisions.

In Meggs’ case, we can see the kinds of fluctuations in life that many claimants must experience: taking the difficult decision to seek a safer, freer life but then, paradoxically, losing all individual autonomy and often experiencing new forms of persecution in the country of supposed refuge. Finally – if international protection is granted – it may be possible to regain the sense of control of one’s life and even be an agent of positive change for others. Alain A., in Italy, also shared a renewed sense of agency:

I would still choose Italy because it wasn’t about choosing a place, it wasn’t, it was about being where you are accepted, where you can live the life you want to live, without judgement, without persecution, so anywhere would have been good and thank God it is Italy. I didn’t ever think of that. I didn’t ever think of there will be a day when I will tell somebody like I am gay and the person accepts me and just smile and live with me no matter, I didn’t ever think of that. (…) when I came to Italy, I got so much support and especially the support of acceptance, when people accept you for who you are, that is so big, it gives you, like, freedom to be able to express your mind and freedom to be able to sit with people and talk.

A number of the SOGI asylum claimants and refugees who made time to talk to us were either working to support others in their situation or planning to do so. Jayne (UK), for example, told us that ‘[m]y moto now is I don’t want to see anyone going through what I went through’. They did it to support others, but also recognised the benefits to themselves:

I am involved with [group X], I am involved with, I also volunteer with the [group Y], through the weekend I was doing a peer mentoring programme with [group Z], I am involved with nationally director with [group W] … Yes, so maybe those are the kind of things that help me to keep sane, to be fair (Jayne, UK).

In this section, we have attempted to highlight how much all our participants valued their independence and their desire to take back control of their lives. Of course this is not unique to SOGI asylum claimants, but a feeling likely to be common to all refugees. However, we have also illustrated some of the distinct ways in which the agency of SOGI claimants is both undermined and may – eventually – be enhanced in their European host country. Particularly striking was the increasing number of NGOs and community organisations set up and managed by SOGI asylum claimants, either during their wait for a decision, or upon finally receiving refugee status (where that was the case). These efforts may have started as a response to the prohibition on asylum claimants taking paid employment on the part of people committed to using this period of waiting in a constructive way. However, such endeavours often developed into permanent career pathways for people keen to improve the asylum process for others following in their footsteps.

6 Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, as in our whole work, one difficulty has been separating the experiences of SOGI minorities claiming asylum that relate specifically to their SOGI from those experiences that relate more generally to their identities as asylum claimants in Europe. This is unsurprising: as our focus on intersectionality and queer theories shows (Chap. 3), identities are fluid, with different characteristics mattering more or less at different points in life and in different contexts. That means that improving the experiences of SOGI asylum claimants will require addressing their experiences in a holistic way, recognising the impact of age, religion, gender, ethnicity and many other factors, as we consider in our next and final chapter.

Laying the basis for that, this chapter has been considered under four headings: identities, discrimination, place and agency. Our argument is that these, broadly speaking, are helpful ways to think about the obstacles for SOGI minorities claiming asylum in Europe – obstacles in terms of having a fairly assessed claim and obstacles in terms of wider integration and engagement in a new society. Addressing our participants’ experiences through these four lenses highlights many potential areas for improvement based on validating identities, reducing discrimination, creating supportive spaces and enhancing agency. We do this in more concrete ways in the final chapter that follows.