A Theoretical Framework: A Human Rights Reading of SOGI Asylum Based on Feminist and Queer Studies

Since SOGI considerations have started to inform the interpretation and the implementation of the Refugee Convention (Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-69441-8_1), a broad range of scholars from different disciplines have explored how questions of sexual orientation and gender identity can be effectively addressed within international, supranational and domestic asylum systems. The debate around aspects of RSD and beyond generated by this theoretical exchange within the same discipline and between different research areas has contributed to the (ongoing) normative movement towards a more inclusive Refugee Convention framework. In an attempt to nurture this continuous debate, we outline the theoretical and analytical frameworks that shape the subsequent analysis. We take advantage of the authors’ diverse experience in different academic fields to apply an interdisciplinary approach, addressing our subject from various perspectives. We start from the recognition that a detailed understanding and application of the Refugee Convention is vital as the floor for addressing SOGI asylum claims, but not in itself sufficient to ensure that these are fairly treated. Section 3.2 therefore looks to human rights to show how interweaving human rights frameworks with refugee law heightens understanding in this field of asylum. To this end, the main body of this chapter develops an approach that addresses the failings from a SOGI asylum perspective of international human rights law (IHRL) and international refugee law (IRL) individually. However, we then argue that, without explicitly recognising the gendered and sexualised nature of SOGI asylum, IHRL is only part of the solution. In Sects. 3.3 and 3.4 below, we claim that feminist and queer theories, and particular threads of debate within these broad disciplines, can help to understand the experiences of SOGI minorities fleeing persecution and, importantly, to explain why, despite improvements to the law and guidance that recognise the right to protection on this basis, there has been insufficient progress on the ground. In this way, combining a human rights-based approach that is largely legal with political and sociological contributions from feminism and queer theories facilitates a more holistic analysis.


Introduction
Since SOGI considerations have started to inform the interpretation and the implementation of the Refugee Convention (Chap. 1), a broad range of scholars from different disciplines have explored how questions of sexual orientation and gender identity can be effectively addressed within international, supranational and domestic asylum systems. The debate around aspects of RSD and beyond generated by this theoretical exchange within the same discipline and between different research areas has contributed to the (ongoing) normative movement towards a more inclusive Refugee Convention framework. In an attempt to nurture this continuous debate, we outline the theoretical and analytical frameworks that shape the subsequent analysis. We take advantage of the authors' diverse experience in different academic fields to apply an interdisciplinary approach, addressing our subject from various perspectives. We start from the recognition that a detailed understanding and application of the Refugee Convention is vital as the floor for addressing SOGI asylum claims, but not in itself sufficient to ensure that these are fairly treated. Section 3.2 therefore looks to human rights to show how interweaving human rights frameworks with refugee law heightens understanding in this field of With my gender… it's like… why don't they stop, I don't think it's important to ask. What I'll be, I'll be. It's important I'm queer and I'm here. (Prince Emrah, Germany) asylum. To this end, the main body of this chapter develops an approach that addresses the failings from the perspective of international human rights law (IHRL), both alone and in interaction with international refugee law (IRL). However, we then argue that, without explicitly recognising the gendered and sexualised nature of SOGI asylum, IHRL is only part of the solution. In Sects. 3.3 and 3.4 below, we claim that feminist and queer theories, and particular threads of debate within these broad disciplines, can help to understand the experiences of SOGI minorities fleeing persecution and, importantly, to explain why, despite improvements to the law and guidance that recognise the right to protection on this basis, there has been insufficient progress on the ground. In this way, combining a human rightsbased approach that is largely legal with political and sociological contributions from feminism and queer theories facilitates a more holistic analysis.

A Human Rights Approach to SOGI Asylum: What Role for Rights?
The theoretical debate over the application of the Refugee Convention through a 'human rights paradigm' is not new (Anker 2002;Cantor 2016;Storey 2015). Yet, what this 'paradigm' means for SOGI asylum claims, and how to interpret the concepts at play within this context, remains largely unexplored. In her seminal study of the role of human rights in sexual orientation asylum claims, Jenni Millbank showed that 'the lack of a human rights framework, in general, combined with an underdeveloped analysis of sexual orientation as a human rights issue' can lead to 'extremely regressive refugee determinations' (Millbank 2004, p. 194). She demonstrates how different framings of SOGI minorities as human rights holders potentially restrict or expand protection under the Refugee Convention. She also makes it clear that the lack of a human rights framework in the field of asylum cannot simply be addressed by referring to international human rights standards, that is, those emerging from the international human rights treaties binding upon the European countries explored in our study. These include, at minimum, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), which also binds the European Union. 1 Millbank's work does not provide a fully expounded theoretical model for the basis of a human rights 'paradigm' for SOGI asylum. 2 Nevertheless, her contribution provides a good starting point for the aim of this section: to construct a human rights 1 Council of Europe, European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as amended by Protocols Nos. 11 and 14, 4 November 1950; European Union: Council of the European Union, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union ( /C 303/01), 14 December 2007 Although she only addressed sexual orientation asylum claims, her findings apply equally to gender identity, as the denial of human rights enjoyment is common to all members of SOGI minorities (Muntarbhorn 2017;Ramón Mendos 2019). approach to SOGI asylum. To this end, and applying a multi-layered approach following Millbank, we focus on three interrelated aspects of the potential role played by human rights: a) the status of SOGI within human rights law; b) the general relation between human rights and refugee law when SOGI is in play; and c) the possibility of reading human rights law in parallel with the international refugee system based on the Refugee Convention to protect SOGI within and beyond asylum.
The reason for such a threefold investigation lies in the very foundations of the idea of human rights, based on 'the recognition of the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family'. 3 Yet, as Paul Johnson, Martha Nussbaum and Robert Wintemute demonstrate (Johnson 2013a;Nussbaum 2010;Wintemute 1996), when SOGI minorities are the subject, inherent dignity is not always a guarantor of equal rights. 'Inclusiveness' remains the ideal culmination of an evolutionary process for IHRL, rather than a category of interpretation when these minorities claim 'to have rights'. Using the lens of Arendt's work, SOGI minorities should be protected as members of their countries' 'political communities'. Instead, along with stateless and refugee people 4 -that is, political communities' outsiders -SOGI minorities may find themselves recognised as humans but 'with no effective citizenship and no place in the world' (Arendt 1973, p. 296). As a result, people who are both members of SOGI minorities and asylum claimants may face extreme difficulties in accessing international legal protection.
It is true that, for some critics, 'the idea of human rights as a project (…) is already affected by -and overtly and covertly implicated in -structures of power, laying bare the fallacy of human rights as linked to an external, optimistic pursuit of freedom' (Kapur 2018, p. 2). Equally, human rights advocacy has not always led to the transformation of power relations or to meaningful freedoms for people in need of international protection (Bhabha 2002). Yet, inspired by Arendt's assertion of the primordial 'right to have rights' (Arendt 1973) and while avoiding defining freedom for SOGI claimants as simply 'an accumulation of rights' (Kapur 2018, p. 6), we intend to reconsider IHRL in light of its underlying inclusionary rationale in the asylum context. In fact, while IRL is driven by an exclusionary rationale, leading to a kind of 'in or out' process depending upon whether the specific conditions required by the 'refugee' definition are met, IHRL remains the more inclusive international legal regime. Yet, simply framing IRL as a 'surrogate human rights protection system' (Cantor 2016, p. 357) does not provide any solid ground for our approach. Instead, by recognising that these two international systems are interrelated while remaining distinct (Chetail 2014, p. 24), we need to reframe how human rights should be embedded in IRL to effectively address the challenges that SOGI claimants experience in practice, thus showing how the intersection between these legal fields is potentially beneficial.
To this end, this section elaborates a human rights approach to SOGI asylum by exploring three claims, which ultimately relate to the enjoyment of rights regardless of one's citizenship or of state's consent. First, human rights are essential to qualify SOGI as core aspects of identity and to verify how these should be protected as such (Sect. 3.2.1). Second, human rights in light of SOGI provide a tool for interpreting the Refugee Convention, thus questioning the interaction to date between IHRL and IRL (Sect. 3.2.2). Third, besides helping us elaborate procedural guarantees for people in need of international protection, a human rights approach to SOGI asylum also contributes to substantial developments in terms of autonomous means of protection when refugee law does not offer any or sufficient guarantees to people fleeing homophobia and transphobia (Sect. 3.2.3).

Human Rights and SOGI: Reconsidering Personhood Through a SOGI and Anti-stereotyping Lens
In attempting to (re)affirm the recognition of the inherent dignity of every person, IHRL has provided a fertile environment for setting the conditions to, at a minimum, promote individual autonomy and self-determination. 5 In this context, SOGI are increasingly framed as categories subject to international law protection for the fundamental role they play in defining and expressing personhood 6 (or 'humanity', as Muntarbhorn states it: 2017, p. 2). Despite not being expressly included in universal and regional core human rights treaties prior to their partial inclusion in the CFR, the recognition that human rights violations could be motivated by individuals' or groups' SOGI has led to a twofold process. On the one hand, within international and regional human rights systems, there has been a movement towards a gradual 'definition' of SOGI as universal concepts, as opposed to 'invented' Western categories (Chase 2016, p. 704;Lee 2016). Similarly to the development of the notion of refugee within IRL as apparent in the Refugee Convention (Hathaway 1991, p. 136), this process has identified generalised categories of protection rather than naming marginalised groups in need of protection. That is why, in IHRL, sexual orientation has increasingly been addressed as an 'inherent' 7 and 'most intimate', 8 aspect of human personality, as a basis on which marginalised people are entitled to ask for and obtain protection. 9 That is also why, in supporting what may be a human rights reading of refugee law in the search for a PSG, the CJEU found that 'a common ground' exists in that 'a person's sexual orientation is a characteristic so fundamental to his identity that he should not be forced to renounce it'. 10 The same is true of gender identity, considering that the freedom to name one's gender identity has been framed in the human rights context as 'one of the most basic essentials of self-determination '. 11 This evolution in understanding has not escaped criticism. For instance, Gross affirmed that 'in societies where men have sex with men regardless of any specific sexual identity, defining people as having a sexual orientation that is integral to their humanity constitutes an exportation of the "Western" model of sexual orientation identity and its categorisation of this orientation as a distinct and autonomous feature of the self' (Gross 2013, p. 127;Sect. 3.4). Yet, for our purposes, human rights have created the necessary framework for self-identification, in the sense that SOGI should be protected as such when people choose to refer to these traits in order to express or determine their personhood. In fact, SOGI may correspond to a variety of human rights and freedoms with concrete consequences -as will emerge below -in terms of determination of refugee status. 12 As such, adopting a human rights approach in relation to SOGI asylum supports the protection of the infinite range of ways in which these core characteristics find expression.
In this respect, it is worth noting that common concepts in IRL have already been reconsidered to take into account such developments in IHRL. For instance, the concept of 'exogenous' harm has been questioned for advancing the idea of 'endogenous' harm (Hathaway and Pobjoy 2012), which better expresses SOGI minorities' well-founded fear of persecution. Equally, this understanding of SOGI as the most intimate characteristics of personhood rules out the infamous behaviour/identity dichotomy explored by scholars in the field of asylum (Wessels 2016). As a consequence, our analysis considers any position by countries of origin or host countries supporting a denial or a restriction of an individual's SOGI through human rights violations to be unlawful and intolerable.
On the other hand, a more refined -although not always consistent -clarification of states' obligations under IHRL has materialised in order to protect individuals whose SOGI is at odds with societal norms (Muntarbhorn 2017, p. 2). While it is 9 The same is true at domestic level. For instance, in one of the leading cases of SOGI asylum in the UK, sexual identity was accepted as being 'a fundamental characteristic and an integral part of human freedom': HJ (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) -199/12, C-200/12 and C-201/12, X, Y and Z v Minister voor Immigratie, Integratie en Asiel, 7 November 2013, ECLI:EU:C:2013:720, para. 70. 11 ECtHR, Van Kuck v. Germany, Application no. 35968/97, 12 June 2003 By embracing such an approach, we are not suggesting any normative content for SOGI. Instead, to avoid imposing particular notions on SOGI minorities, these human rights principles will be read through queer and feminist lenses (Sects. 3.3 and 3.4) to assess how fair European asylum systems are towards SOGI claimants. true that, in relation to human rights treaties, 'States gave their consent to a notion of human rights that had certain types of violations in mind, and not others that did not exist at the time', 13 this evolutionary trend does not depend on states' consent but on the ability to read human rights in light of their potential ultimate scope. In other words, human rights bodies have increasingly called upon states to apply the principle of equality and non-discrimination, enshrined in all universal and regional human rights treaties, to more and more freedoms and rights as meaningful expressions of people's dignity, and so one's SOGI. Here, two interrelated consequences are fundamental for SOGI minorities.
First, by bringing to the fore the distinction between negative and positive obligations as two sides of the same coin, the protection of SOGI minorities is now recognised as requiring a proactive role from national authorities, one that addresses the social marginalisation deriving from past discrimination. In light of the complexity of SOGI, this proactive role entails a strong anti-stereotyping approach. By exploring developments aimed at eradicating structural disadvantage and discrimination against certain groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, 14 Eva Brems and Alexandra Timmer advocate a 'legal methodology' consisting of 'naming' and 'contesting' widely accepted beliefs that impair the recognition of the equal dignity and personal autonomy of all individuals (Brems and Timmer 2016;Timmer 2011Timmer , 2015. When applied to SOGI minorities, an anti-stereotyping approach translates into contesting 'ready-made opinions' and 'preconceived ideas that lead to bias' (Timmer 2011, p. 713) and perpetuate discrimination. Such an approach has, for example, allowed the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), the ECtHR and the CJEU to eradicate 'traditional' ideas about the ability of members of SOGI minorities to establish a family life worthy of protection, thus ensuring in some circumstances the same treatment already provided to members of the heterosexual majority. 15 Considering that stereotypes tie SOGI minorities to a particular identity by placing 'a certain mould on individuals, independent of what they are capable of, experience or desire' (Timmer 2011: 715), this anti-stereotyping 'legal methodology' is instrumental in the asylum context. It supports the need to fight against the structural disadvantages from which SOGI claimants suffer by avoiding a default judgment of the individual on account of assumed group characteristics. It requires us, as will be particularly apparent in Chaps. 6 and 7, to name and contest mechanisms connected to asylum adjudicators' mental processes by which, for example, SOGI are consciously or unconsciously defined in terms of societal roles, of 'openness' or appearance/expression in Western terms (Millbank 2009;Spijkerboer 2013Spijkerboer , 2018. 13 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Atala Riffo and Others v. Chile, 24 February 2012, para. 74. 14 In relation to gender, Holtmaat states: 'Stereotypes tend to fixate gender identities and gender roles and make them appear as real, universal, eternal, natural, essential and/or unchangeable. (…) stereotypes often serve to maintain existing power relationships; they are control mechanisms' (Holtmaat and Naber 2011, p. 57 It also requires that we question asylum systems as heteronormatively framed, thus giving rise to a process of 'contestation' of the assumed heterosexual nature of claimants' personhood in every phase of asylum. 16 Second, the range of SOGI-related scenarios identified as human rights violations is growing. What were previously accepted as 'permissible' treatments or attitudes towards SOGI minorities are increasingly recognised as breaching IHRL. While these developments are often framed simply in terms of prohibited discrimination, there are more progressive readings of IHRL, with positive implications for SOGI asylum, though still unrealised in some cases. Two examples illustrate this point. On a positive note, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has asserted that 'the discrimination suffered by [SOGI minorities] is also highly harmful of [their] right to physical integrity'. 17 This is because the process of SOGI self-perception often occurs in a hostile environment, where prejudices are widespread within the family itself. In terms of improved readings of the notion of persecution and of agents of persecution, as well as recognition of lack of protection by the state and/or family, this development is valuable for SOGI claimants. Less positively, the prohibition or the lack of legal recognition of same-sex relationships (in the form of marriage or civil partnerships) irrespective of SOGI is still not seen as a human rights violation under IHRL. Although some fear that this would lead to human rights being used as a vehicle for reinforcing 'homonormativity in the form of marriage of same-sex couples at the expense of giving equal value to diverse forms of living' (Gross 2013, pp. 123-124), this development would enhance the scope and extent of asylum protection in SOGI claims via the notion of persecution. This evolution has a significant impact on IRL. It is worth noting that, although the general prohibition on discrimination is enshrined in the Refugee Convention (Article 3), the meaning of discrimination in IRL remains distinct, that is, more restrictive, if compared to the interpretation of this concept in IHRL (Dowd 2011, p. 28). As a result, when evaluating asylum claims, decision-makers may find it hard to consider the impact of discrimination on the individual's ability to live a dignified life, including family life, to the same extent that they would in a human rights claim. This has led, in practice, to an arbitrary selection of which human rights count as relevant to asylum claims, something we question throughout our study. For this reason, in light of the fact that IHRL demands protection of SOGI, a reconsideration of the role of IHRL as an interpretative tool of IRL is needed to frame the appropriate human rights approach for SOGI asylum.

Human Rights and the Refugee Convention: Establishing the Right Relationship
Like IHRL, refugee law developed at a time when SOGI minorities were barely recognised on the international rights agenda. There is no evidence suggesting such issues were discussed during the preparatory work of the Refugee Convention (UNHCR 1990, p. 36), a deplorable omission given the targeting of SOGI minorities in the violence that led to the Refugee Convention (McAdam 2014;Plant 1987). Yet, despite the differences in aims and scope of application, IHRL and IRL interact and, sometimes, converge when SOGI asylum is considered (Houle and Allister 2017). 18 When the content of these international law areas coincides, this interaction has the potential to create a more inclusive international refugee system. In principle, this may happen where the prohibition on discrimination and the principle of non-refoulement are concerned, as both rights are enshrined in the Refugee Convention as well as in IHRL. That is why both scholars and the UNHCR have stressed that the Refugee Convention should be read through the prism of human rights (Foster and Hathaway 2014;Hathaway 1991;UNHCR 2002UNHCR , paras 5, 9, 2011UNHCR , pp. 1, 8, 14, 16, 36, 81, 2012. Beyond this, it remains unclear precisely how human rights should inform IRL. A human rights approach to SOGI asylum needs to define the extent of this interaction in light of the implications for SOGI protection. From a general point of view, this interaction should not come as a surprise if we consider the general rules on interpretation of international law as codified in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties (VCLT). According to Article 31 of this Convention, 'a treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose' (para. 1), and 'there shall be taken into account, together with the context (…) any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties' (para. 3, c). This means that, while human rights cannot be the only element used to interpret the Refugee Convention, IHRL occupies a primary position among these other international rules when this Convention has to be interpreted and applied. 19 In line with the previous sub-section, we may argue that, in order to respect these rules on interpretation, the Refugee Convention should be read through the ordinary meaning that its terms -for example, discrimination, persecution, well-founded fear -have acquired in today's society and, where SOGI asylum is concerned, taking into account SOGI-specific features. Equally, these rules of interpretation require an interaction between IRL and IHRL that is based on an understanding of human rights that looks at the reasons why international protection is due to SOGI minorities under international law. In other words, only when this interpretation is grounded in the idea of human rights in light of the ideal category of 'inclusiveness' and through an anti-stereotyping approach, can the continuing marginalisation and inequality affecting SOGI minorities be avoided in the refugee context. While our human rights approach for SOGI asylum embraces this model of interaction for the application of IRL, and consequently of European asylum law, the appropriateness of other 'models' already advanced or in use to this day requires further consideration. These come into play, first, from a general point of view and, second, from a more specific SOGI perspective.
Having regard to the general relation between IHRL and IRL, the model of refugee law as surrogate human rights protection based on early Hathaway's writings (Hathaway 1991) deserves attention. Whether or not it has been extensively embraced in theory and in practice (Cantor 2016, p. 378 ff), his model has supported a 'normative reading' of the Refugee Convention by using human rights to provide objective standards on the basis of which asylum adjudicators can read notions that the authors of that Convention intentionally left open. In so doing, it stresses the failure of the state in the claimant's country of origin to respect basic international duties in human rights terms, thus favouring the identification of a selection of rights that, when denied or restricted in the country of origin, may trigger the surrogate protection of IRL (Hathaway 1991, pp. 108-112). Nonetheless, this reasoning has more to do with the scope of application of IHRL and states' obligation to avoid human rights violations abroad, than it has to do with the primary aim of the Refugee Convention (Goodwin-Gill and McAdam 2007). An immediate consequence is indeed a conflation of the individual well-founded fear of persecution with the lack of protection due to that failure -a conflation of two separate concepts of the Convention's definition of refugee. Applying Hathaway's approach, based in practice on a selection of rights rather than looking at human rights as a whole, interpreters of the Refugee Convention act in conflict with the very foundation of human rights as an indivisible catalogue, as well as in an arbitrary way limiting the object of IHRL's protection.
When applied more specifically to SOGI, the inconsistencies in this approach are evident. By focusing on the failure of the country of origin to provide protection, 20 asylum adjudicators concentrate on the lack of guarantees for the enjoyment of nonderogable rights. In doing so, however, they disregard the effect of violating the full, interdependent, range of human rights in generating a well-founded fear of persecution in people who identify as belonging to SOGI minorities. Moreover, in practice, this model reinforces some negative trends in the protection of SOGI under IHRL, which connect these core characteristics to only certain human rights and, stereotypically, to certain aspects of life (Johnson 2013a;McGoldrick 2016). In the SOGI asylum context, a good example can be taken from the case law of the CJEU. When it was called upon to read EU asylum law in light of the wide EU's human rights framework in a ruling related to claims based on sexual orientation, the CJEU referred directly to the right to respect for private life as 'naturally' connected to sexual orientation, something that is incompatible with the indivisibility of human rights. 21 Considering the specific features of SOGI in the context of asylum, the UNHCR's interpretative activity also needs to be reconsidered. While the UNHCR has supported a human rights reading of the Refugee Convention since the first publication of its 'Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status', a coherent explanation of how IHRL and IRL interact has not been developed (also Cantor 2016, pp. 352-353). This is evident when SOGI claims are involved, as the UNHCR 2012 SOGI Guidelines show (UNHCR 2012). By referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the cornerstone of IHRL, the Guidelines state that 'all people, including LGBTI individuals, are entitled to enjoy the protection provided for by international human rights law on the basis of equality and nondiscrimination' (UNHCR 2012, para. 5, our emphasis). While they stress that 'respect for fundamental rights as well as the principle of non-discrimination are core aspects of the 1951 Convention', setting the ground for an interaction in line with Article 31 VCLT, the Guidelines then limit their potential scope in at least two ways. First, they refer only to the refugee definition as one that needs to be interpreted through a human rights lens; however, such an interpretative interaction should inform the application of the entire Refugee Convention (see Articles 2-34), even if IHRL may provide independent, and broader, protection beyond the refugee definition, as we discuss below. Second, the Guidelines explicitly refer to the 2007 'Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity' as a privileged instrument for identifying the human rights protection framework applicable in the context of SOGI (UNHCR 2012, para. 7). 22 Yet, despite their positive impact on the evolution of IHRL and their diffusion within universal human rights bodies (Thoreson 2009), these Principles only reflect 'well-established' principles of IHRL (UNHCR 2012, para. 7). Given that the aim of the Principles is to ensure universal visibility to 'already binding' SOGI-related human rights obligations, they do not go as far as they should in defining how IHRL should be read on the basis of the overarching principles of equality and non-discrimination. 23 As a result, one cannot exclude the possibility that the UNHRC SOGI Guidelines may generate ambiguous interpretations of the Refugee Convention if applied without a sufficiently encompassing understanding of IHRL and SOGI. 21 Joined Cases C-199/12, C-200/12 and C-201/12, X, Y and Z v Minister voor Immigratie, Integratie en Asiel, 7 November 2013, ECLI:EU:C:2013:720. 22 See the update version of these Principles: Various 2017. 23 Interestingly, Gross (2013, pp. 126-128) also criticises these Principles for their definitions of SOGI, for example, '[s]exual orientation defined as such is a feature of modern "Western" societies but not necessarily a feature of all humanity'.
In order to avoid such pitfalls, we suggest a more principled approach to the interaction between IHRL and IRL as a part of a human rights approach to SOGI asylum. Following the legal and theoretical developments explored above (Sect. 3.2.1), a framework for interpreting the Refugee Convention through a human rights lens should be based on two essential features: (1) the principle of equality and nondiscrimination, as the major point of intersection between IRL and IHRL, including in terms of positive obligations and an anti-stereotyping approach; and (2) recognition of SOGI as core aspects of individual personhood needing protection. This approach would enable an evaluation of the impact of denying or restricting human rights in terms of an individual's SOGI and their ability to express their personhood. By 'measuring' how serious a human rights violation is for particular individuals, the approach suggested here would also question and avoid rigid categorisations of rights when defining a refugee under the Refugee Convention. Equally, while having regard to the VCLT, this approach eliminates the likelihood of a selective or limited application of IHRL that results in the continuation of 'permissible persecution' of SOGI minorities through refugee law (Johnson 2007, p. 99). In addition, a positive collateral effect of this approach would be to finally clarify what protection is really achievable through IRL when interpreted in the light of IHRL and what autonomous role IHRL can additionally play, owing to the impossibility of stretching the interpretation of IRL in a way that goes well beyond its ordinary meaning. Considering the range of experiences faced by SOGI claimants before, during and after the asylum process, IHRL may further complement the Refugee Convention, both procedurally and substantively, as we will now discuss.

Human Rights as an Independent Basis for Protection in SOGI Asylum: From Procedural Guarantees to Substantive Fairness
As Bhabha states, people in need of international protection appear to be 'a temporary and increasingly disenfranchised category of non-citizens' who need to wait until their status is settled to enjoy the prospect of long-term safety and, at least to a certain extent, non-discriminatory treatment (Bhabha 2002, p. 115). Although the Refugee Convention (Articles 3-34) provides a framework of guarantees that binds state parties, these are not based on the requirement that refugees should be treated equally to citizens in the host states, nor are they framed in terms of human rights (Cantor 2016;Chetail 2014). As scholars in this field have explored, the process faced by asylum claimants underlines, in particular, two different situations where IHRL provides an independent basis for protection: the evaluation of the asylum request and the life in the host countries during and after the asylum process.
In contrast to the period of departure and travel towards a 'safe haven', where the question of jurisdiction under relevant human rights treaties is also still debatable in terms of obligations to issue humanitarian visas (Danisi 2019; Moreno-Lax 2018; Chaps. 4 and 5), human rights obligations certainly apply when people in need of international protection submit an asylum request. It is at this precise moment that the risk of an 'intersection of borders of inequality' (Peroni 2018) emerges strongly for SOGI claimants, but also when human rights may concretely shape a fair system for the evaluation of their applications, their reception and integration (Chaps. 6, 7, 8 and 9). While IHRL does not encompass a right to receive asylum, universal and regional human rights bodies have defined the conditions for facilitating the right to claim asylum, thus sowing the seeds for defining the concept of fairness in the asylum context. First, in light of the principle of non-refoulement, reaffirmed in the European context by Article 19 CFR as the corner stone of the protection to be granted to everyone, a thorough individual evaluation of each asylum request is due. Even when a third country qualifies as 'safe' (Chap. 6), for example as a consequence of international agreements for facilitating readmission or transferal, the evolution of IHRL binds national authorities to verify whether or not, for personal circumstances or characteristics or for lack of procedural guarantees in the country of destination, a person risks being exposed to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. 24 The fairness of any asylum system thus depends on the national authority's ability to take into account the specific situation of people claiming asylum, through the lenses proposed in this chapter, in order to promote a dignified treatment. 25 This principle applies well beyond non-refoulement, spreading its potential effect to the entire human rights catalogue when applied to the situation of people in need of international protection. To use the words of the ECtHR, the ultimate aim is always 'to avoid situations which may reproduce the plight that forced these persons to flee in the first place'. 26 When these general guarantees, aiming -at a minimum -to ensure individual assessment and effective access to an asylum procedure, are applied to people requesting asylum on SOGI grounds, they result in an individualised procedure that, among other things, considers the specific needs of the claimant and avoids stereotyping. This individualised approach is evident in the context of reception at European and universal level, 27 as a result of the interpretation of the right to liberty and security in light of the need of people belonging to SOGI minorities to avoid being placed with people having the same socio-cultural and/or religious background of their persecutors. An anti-stereotyping approach has, in turn, found application in the assessment of asylum requests. Here, a fair approach precludes 24  questioning that is detrimental to the dignity of SOGI claimants or that relies exclusively on stereotypical ideas of sexual minorities. 28 This human rights approach to SOGI asylum includes some of the benchmarks against which we will assess the fairness of European asylum systems. In an attempt to deliver a fair system, national authorities often identify particular people, such as women claimants, as 'vulnerable' or members of 'vulnerable' groups. Scholars such as Martha Fineman, and Timmer and Lourdes Peroni (Fineman 2008;Peroni and Timmer 2013) have emphasised the negative consequences of such identification, including the stigmatisation of some individuals and groups in a way that risks perpetuating stereotypes. Yet, from a purely legal perspective, 'vulnerability' seems to underline, as a matter of principle, a higher risk of being exposed to human rights violations. This risk may be due to personal characteristics, the claimant's history of past discrimination, or measures adopted by transit or host countries against migrants, including people claiming asylum. In this way, in the asylum context, the attribution of vulnerability may simply increase visibility of the need for support for specific claimants and, without creating new human rights obligations, may focus attention on the human rights positive duties of national authorities (Ippolito 2018). For example, in some cases, the qualification as 'vulnerable' could result in lowering the threshold for finding degrading or discriminatory treatment for the purpose of recognising refugee status (Brandl and Czech 2015). Overall, however, when vulnerability emerges as a group-centred concept, it seems in tension with an approach such as ours that resists stereotypes and highlights intersectionality (also Chap. 2). As such, 'compounded vulnerability' (Timmer 2013) seems to be the only definition that should be applied to SOGI claimants as a group. Following Timmer's approach, 'compounded vulnerability' can be defined as the higher risk SOGI claimants run of being exposed to human rights violations owing to the intersection of multiple 'endogenous' traits defining their individual personhood (like SOGI, gender, disability, refugeness, etc.) with 'exogenous' contexts (like reception conditions or asylum interview). In fact, while rejecting an application of vulnerability as an exclusionary tool, 29 we can accept a strategic use of vulnerability as framed here to underline a temporary condition of human rights deprivation to be specifically addressed through structural and individual solutions required from states.
The same applies in the context of integration. While the Refugee Convention does not include SOGI in its non-discrimination provisions, a human rights approach requires that these claimants be able to enjoy the full catalogue of human rights and freedoms, that is, at least the rights and freedoms that emerge from international human rights treaties binding host states, irrespective of their SOGI, asylum background and/or their status as non-citizens. Equal access to employment, healthcare or education, to name a few examples (Chap. 9), will not address all claimants' needs and rights (ORAM 2010, pp. 27-35). Under IHRL, states are also required to enable SOGI minorities to express their SOGI in every dimension of life, including family relationships. 30 They must also identify and address the intersection of different grounds of discrimination when these emerge as an obstacle to integration (Muntarbhorn 2017, p. 12), in line with the intersectional lenses proposed in the next Section. Nonetheless, the current protection of SOGI minorities in some host countries fails to respect all rights that SOGI minorities should enjoy. This hampers the necessary improvements needed for a truly fair SOGI asylum. For instance, it would be difficult to justify a finding of persecution for denial of recognition of same-sex unions in claimants' countries of origin while in many European states such unions are still not legally recognised.
The prevailing standards in human rights protection of SOGI minorities in some European states may also prevent the use of alternatives to asylum to protect people who are forced to flee their countries on SOGI grounds. Here, human rights may provide the autonomous framework for looking beyond asylum to offer protection. For example, a human rights-based approach may require states to ensure the right to family reunification irrespective of SOGI, to issue humanitarian visas, or to promote the rights of SOGI minorities in international relations with countries of origin of SOGI refugees. 31 In sum, in the first part of this chapter, we have laid out a human rights approach to SOGI asylum demonstrating what a genuine interaction between IRL and IHRL entails, as the basis for identifying individualised procedures and solutions for people in need of international protection in general and SOGI claimants in particular. However, we posit that addressing SOGI asylum only through this human rights approach cannot create the necessary improvements both within and outside asylum procedures without an understanding of the larger context within which these claims exist. That is why, to understand the socio-legal experiences of SOGI asylum claimants we need to complement the above analysis with some brief inroads into feminism and queer theories.

A Feminist Approach to SOGI Asylum
In this section we ask what feminist analysis brings to an understanding of SOGI asylum. We start by explaining why it is useful to look to feminism when seeking to understand and improve the experiences of SOGI minorities claiming asylum in Europe. While our two other underpinning bodies of literature -human rights scholarship and queer theories -have an obvious link to research addressing SOGI asylum as a European human rights challenge, the connection to feminism may be less obvious. Our reasoning is that it is impossible to fully understand any global forms of injustice and abuse, including the injustice and abuse that drives some people to claim asylum, without feminism; that feminism is an essential tool of analysis for any project with a social justice goal, not only in its underpinning aims, but also in the debates that it has generated. Furthermore, there are fundamental intersections between gender and SOGI persecution, and the way that IRL and domestic policy addresses both that make feminism of particular relevance here, as we show below.
Feminism is not, of course, a unified theory (nor is queer theory or human rights scholarship) and there are many different 'feminisms'. It is conceptualised here (rather than defined) in its very broadest sense as a body of scholarship and activism that recognises gender and/or sex as a critical factor in explaining and combatting societal and global inequality, that is, a social force for change embracing theory and activism. This encompasses activities from lobbying the UN to empower women through the Millennium Development Goals, to seeking to increase the proportion of women on company boards in the UK, to demonstrating for women's right to enter temples in India. Furthermore, there are many scholars and activists who come within this understanding of feminism but who would reject that label because of its association with Western/White women's scholarship, in favour of another term. Most obviously, Alice Walker coined the term 'Womanist' for 'A black feminist or feminist of color' (Walker 2004, p. xi).
Our starting point is the recognition that women and SOGI minorities experience high levels of discrimination and abuse around the world on the basis of their SOGI, and that these experiences sometimes force them to flee their homes and countries of origin. We illustrate this with a quote from Lord Hope taken from a landmark case for women claiming asylum in the UK, because it highlights what is distinctive about women's persecution: 'The reason why the appellants fear persecution is not just because they are women. It is because they are women in a society which discriminates against women'. 32 Lord Hope's words could equally be rewritten as: 'The reason why the appellants fear persecution is not just because they are LGBTIQ+. It is because they are LGBTIQ+ people in a society which discriminates against LGBTIQ+ people'.
This goes to the heart of what is distinctive about gender and SOGI persecution. The archetypal refugee is an individual fleeing a time-specific and space-bound form of political persecution -defectors from North Korea or perceived collaborators in Iraq, to give two examples (Home Office 2016, 2019). The oppression and marginalisation of women, in contrast, has been shown through feminism to be a phenomenon that is as diverse as it is universal (as queer theories have shown in relation to SOGI minorities). As Verdirame points out, '[t]he recognition of a political dissident as a refugee may expose the wrongdoing of a government, but the grant of refugee status to women fleeing gender-based persecution or gay men escaping homophobia will often also expose the wrongdoing of a society' (Verdirame 2012, pp. 559-560). The abuse of women and SOGI minorities is generally ongoing, systematic and is a phenomenon of both 'refugee-producing' and 'refugee-receiving' countries. 33 Despite this seeming incongruence between gender and SOGI-based persecution, on the one hand, and the premise of refugee law, on the other, 'refugeereceiving countries' have, since the late twentieth century, come to recognise gender and SOGI-based asylum claims, generally by using the category of PSG in this context. In the UK, the 1999 case of Shah and Islam, from which Lord Hope's words are taken, was the catalyst for this. Yet, this deployment also causes problems in classification: if one adopts a universalising theory of women's oppression, as some Western second wave feminism may be viewed as doing (such as de Beauvoir 1997;Daly 1979;Millett 1977), 34 then any woman who is outside the country of her nationality should be able to claim asylum but no state would be positioned to provide it because of the global nature of women's persecution. Of course, this is not the case for many reasons relating to IRL and its domestic application, but this oversimplification highlights the potential difficulty faced by advocates for women and SOGI minorities claiming asylum, and which we explore further in the debates we highlight below. Several complex facts need to be reconciled here: (a) women and SOGI minorities are indeed in need of refuge because of their experiences as women and SOGI minorities; (b) those experiences are not universal but, on the contrary, highly diverse to the extent that the very categories of women and SOGI minorities (and its many variations) are increasingly contested, raising the question of what, if anything, is the shared basis for being defined and self-defining as a woman or member of a SOGI minority; (c) broadly speaking, feminist and queer activists, lawyers and scholars share a commitment to using refugee law to protect women and SOGI minorities from persecution; (d) the most expedient way to promote the interests of women and SOGI asylum claimants within the flawed but existing paradigm of 'refugee-producing' and 'refugee-receiving' countries may be to depict the former as misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic regimes and the latter as havens characterised by freedom and democracy.
In the confines of a few pages, what is the best way to 'use' feminism, given its breadth, to address these difficulties? There are some obvious points of entry when 33 See, for example, ONS figures for domestic abuse in England and Wales 2018. https://www.ons. g o v . u k / p e o p l e p o p u l a t i o n a n d c o m m u n i t y / c r i m e a n d j u s t i c e / b u l l e t i n s / domesticabuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018#prevalence-of-domestic-abuse 34 Recognising the problematic universalising elements to these works should not detract from recognition that all of these writers made significant contributions to second wave feminism and establishing gender as the critical site of activism, theory and debate that it now is globally. approaching SOGI asylum from a feminist perspective. One would be to take a practitioner-based, bottom-up approach building on the similarities in concrete terms between claims based on gender and SOGI persecution: the fact that persecution is often carried out by private actors, that evidence is therefore more difficult to secure, that shame and stigma may contribute to claimants' experiences, and that sexual violence is often a cause of flight. Alternatively, one could take a top-down approach, starting with the abstract concept of a refugee in international law and then considering how that maps onto the experiences of women and SOGI minorities (recognising that many women also identify as members of a SOGI minority). Taking either of these starting points, one could look to a wealth of gender-focused writing on asylum that challenges the core paradigm of the Refugee Convention and its failure to meet the needs of women. Feminist refugee scholars have shown, first, how IRL was created to address the persecution of the male, individual, human rights-bearing subject and, second, how women have been shoe-horned into the PSG category to address this (Crawley 2001;Firth and Mauthe 2013;Greatbatch 1989;Kneebone 2005;Macklin 1995;Oxford 2005). 35 Much of this theory would apply to SOGI asylum and shed light on why SOGI claims often fail, and various writers have addressed women's and SOGI asylum together (Lewis 2014;Neilson 2005).
We feel that either of those approaches, while of interest, would provide little more than a literature review. Instead, in this section we take a different approach, one we feel is more original and therefore more productive: we look beyond the refugee literature to specific debates within feminism as a broader body of scholarship. These debates -dating back half a century -analyse gender inequality through the lenses of culture, identity and difference in a way that sheds new light on SOGIbased asylum claims.

Feminism and Multiculturalism
Our starting point is a debate that speaks directly to the question above concerning how, within the prevalent paradigm of 'refugee-producing' and 'refugee-receiving' countries, it is possible to promote the interests of women and SOGI asylum claimants without affirming cultural binaries of oppressive and saviour states. In 1999, there was an academic and public discussion about whether Western democratic states are more advanced than non-Western regimes in terms of women's rights, sparked by the question posed by Susan Moller Okin: 'Is multiculturalism bad for women?' in her publication under that name. She went on to ask: 'What should be done when the claims of minority cultures or religions clash with the norm of gender equality that is at least formally endorsed by liberal states (however much they continue to violate it in their practices)?' (Okin 1999).
While Okin recognised that all societies are characterised by gender inequality, she believed that Western democracies have moved further away from their patriarchal pasts than other types of society. She asked: '[w]hen a woman from a more patriarchal culture comes to the United States (or some other Western, basically liberal, state), why should she be less protected from male violence than other women are?' (Okin 1999, p. 20). Okin was not writing about asylum. However, this is an argument that is often used by advocates and activists for refugee women and SOGI minorities: for example, women in the UK are protected from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); we should extend that protection to women from other countries (Singer 2012). Women from countries that either allow FGM or fail to protect women from FGM, and who are able to escape, should be entitled to claim asylum and the mechanism for doing so is generally their membership of a PSG. Similar arguments are made in relation to SOGI: '[the gay man's] country of nationality is therefore not affording him the necessary level of protection. So the receiving country should'. 36 Applying Okin's reasoning to the field of asylum, we find what is in fact the present reality: here, the world is divided into 'refugee-producing countries' (countries where women are oppressed through 'practices' such as FGM) and 'refugeereceiving countries' (countries where women are liberated and that liberation is expressed in ways that may include genitoplasty among other forms of cosmetic surgery, but which are not oppressive because they are perceived as being freely chosen). One could argue that Okin both explains and solves the problem of gender equality: the values and gender equality standards of Western societies are more progressive than those in other parts of the world; they simply need to be applied systematically and universally. If this is true in the context of gender-based asylum claims, it is equally true for SOGI minorities seeking protection. The problem is not one of analysis or understanding, but simply of application.
We reject this position and do so by approaching it through a number of other feminist-based analyses deriving from intersectionality, Black and post-colonial perspectives and interrogations of 'cultural identities'. Most of the writers cited are not responding to Okin directly, but their work undermines her arguments from various perspectives in ways that are useful to understanding SOGI-based asylum.

Intersectional Feminist Writing
The binary categories that Okin's work depends upon are disrupted when we introduce the notion of intersectionality. Intersectionality is generally attributed to USA legal scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw, who is credited with coining the term, but the concept dates back to at least the late 1970s with the work of the Combahee River Collective: The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking (Combahee River Collective 1977, p. 13).
A decade later, Crenshaw developed intersectionality as an anti-discrimination tool to explain and combat Black women's experiences of inequality by showing that these experiences are not only distinct from White women's and Black men's, but also cannot be explained by simply adding recognition of racism to recognition of gender oppression (Brah and Phoenix 2004;Crenshaw 1991;Hill Collins and Bilge 2016;Phoenix and Pattynama 2006). As she argued: 'Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated' (Crenshaw 1989, p. 140).
Intersectionality has subsequently developed into a large body of scholarship, including work that critiques the value of the concept itself (Anthias 2013;Firth and Mauthe 2013;Grabham et al. 2008;Nash 2008). It has an obvious application to the issues discussed here. Davis, for example, argues that applying an understanding of intersectionality will lead to legal redress for human rights abuses that is better able to address the realities of women's experiences, with application to asylum and furthermore to SOGI asylum (Davis 2015). However, two things are striking in considering it as an explanatory tool when approaching asylum from the perspective of gender and SOGI. Firstly, the ubiquity of the concept of intersectionality in academia but also beyond: bodies such as CEDAW, for example, routinely reference it in statements such as 'discrimination against women based on sex and/or gender is often inextricably linked with and compounded by other factors that affect women, such as "race", ethnicity, religion or belief, health, age, class, caste, being lesbian, bisexual or transgender and other status' (CEDAW 2014, para. 6). In some ways, intersectionality has become a victim of its own success, a value that is universally espoused, mainstreamed to the point of being taken for granted, and assumed to be now fully entrenched beyond feminist discourse. 37 Secondly, at the same time and paradoxically, it is startling to see how little impact it has as an applied concept in law or policy -certainly in relation to asylum where, as we will see in subsequent chapters, decision-makers appear unable to recognise that lesbian women claiming asylum have been persecuted on the basis of both their gender and their sexuality. 37 Both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN independent expert on SOGI have stressed the need for an intersectional approach with such other grounds to capture the harmful effect of discriminatory treatment on individuals in question. So, sex, ethnic origin, age, religion, socio-economic factors including poverty, and/or armed conflicts may exacerbate discrimination on SOGI grounds: And we see the failure to apply any grasp of intersectionality at even a basic level in the assumptions about religious, age and class-based identity that are prevalent in asylum decision-making.
Moreover, this plays out beyond the legal asylum machinery in terms of the support structures available to people seeking asylum, who often end up choosing between LGBTIQ+ or migrant support groups rather than groups that can address the totality of their experiences. Intersectional analyses can be of tangible value here in undermining such tunnel-vision thinking. Patricia Hill Collins, for example, points to the way a 'queer of colour critique' uses intersectionality to both draw from and critique 'critical race theory', feminism and queer theories. This can highlight gaps in political agendas: an LGBTIQ+ focus on workplace and marriage equality does not address the high rates of violence and murder experienced by Black trans people (Hill Collins 2019, pp. 106-107). In the next section, we look to queer intersectionality theories to support our analysis.
An intersectional approach is critical to our analysis, yet it has drawbacks. It can be used on multiple levels, simplistically, or with different meanings (Phoenix and Pattynama 2006). Moreover, following Floya Anthias (2013), we argue that its deconstructionist project may have limitations when applied to law and policy. The risk is that intersectionality alone may simply create and affirm a larger number of categories than previously without enhancing understanding or the means to address inequality. Additionally, it may entrench an identity-based approach at the expense of socio-economic analysis. None of these flaws are inherent in the discourse and many scholars have developed intersectionality-based approaches to improve it, which is why we defend intersectionality as a key notion to inform our analysis in subsequent chapters. We are also guided by Hill Collins in recognising intersectionality as 'a metaphor of social transformation (…) It arrived in the midst of ongoing struggles to resist social inequalities brought about by racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and similar systems of power' (Hill Collins 2019, p. 27). In this way, as much as a theory, it is a problem-solving tool that can support scholars bridging the gap between theory and practice in the area of refugee studies in a holistic way that few other theoretical approaches are able to do. Moreover, it complements the Black and post-colonial scholarship considered in the next section.

Anti-essentialism
Critiques of 'Is multiculturalism bad for women?' build on and foreshadow a large body of writing by feminists and those who would reject the label but who share a common recognition that feminism, as it developed through its first and second waves in the West, had little to say to or to offer Black or minoritised women, partly because of a tendency to homogenise and extrapolate the experiences of all women based on those of White women and partly because of its failure to acknowledge historical contexts, specifically histories of colonialism, racism and slavery. This has implications for those writing and active in the field of asylum, which we go on to explore, considering some of the gender-focused, Black and post-colonial scholarship that challenges essentialist notions of culture and identity and effectively complements intersectionality.
Discourses that contrast a free Western and westernised female subject with a subjugated Other -frequently embodied in the form of the veiled Muslim womanhave been interrogated over several decades, although often not with a focus on refugee law. Writing in the 1980s, Chandra Talpade Mohanty contrasted the 'truncated' life the average 'Third World' woman is assumed to lead with the '(implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions' (Mohanty 1988, p. 337). And in 1991, Isabelle R Gunning used the term 'arrogant perception' for Western descriptions of other 'cultural practices' such as FGM, suggesting that Western feminists' 'articulations of concern over the contemporary practice of genital surgery in third world nations are often perceived as only thinly disguised expressions of racial and cultural superiority and imperialism' (Gunning 1991, p. 212). From post-colonialism and subaltern studies, and in an earlier women-focused articulation of the homonationalism discussed in Sect. 3.4, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak demonstrates how 'the protection of women (today the "thirdworld woman") becomes a signifier for the establishment of a good society' (Spivak 1988, p. 94). Her most famous quote could be rewritten to describe European asylum as '[straight] White men [and White women] are saving brown women [and queer people] from brown men' (Spivak 1988, p. 92).
Writers who approach gender through an analysis of culture challenge the portrayal of women as victims of their cultures and of cultures as unchanging monoliths. As Avtar Brah points out, we should conceive cultures 'less in terms of reified artefacts and rather more as processes' (Brah 1991, p. 174). Uma Narayan has highlighted how early feminist condemnations of Sati as an Indian practice reinforced portrayals of unchanging non-Western cultures, in which 'Indian women seem to go up in flames -on the funeral pyres of their husbands and in the "kitchen accidents" that are the characteristic mode of dowry-murder -without historical pause' (Narayan 1997, p. 48). Narayan draws attention to the way colonial condemnation of Sati was politically motivated: Thus liberty and equality could be represented as paradigmatic "Western values," hallmarks of its civilizational superiority, at the very moment when Western nations were engaged in slavery, colonization, expropriation, and the denial of liberty and equality not only to the colonized but to large segments of Western subjects, including women (Narayan 2000, pp. 83-84).
She calls for a commitment to 'antiessentialism' both in relation to women and culture, resisting the reification of cultures that prevails (Narayan 2000, p. 98). In the current context and a climate of terrorism and Islamophobia, the archetypal Other has become further entrenched as the veiled Muslim woman -as has been widely recognised and written about by feminists and women writers (Abu-lughod 2015; Farris 2017). The challenge to essentialist thinking is particularly relevant to research with LGBTIQ+ refugees subject to compartmentalisation based on narrow understandings of the experiences of just a few individuals.
Move to the context of refugee law and this illustrates a problem that Audrey Macklin starts to identify when she points out: If the United States, or Canada, or Australia are refugee-acceptors, it follows that whatever they do cannot constitute persecution, because that would make them potential refugeeproducers (…) The practical consequence of this effacement will be that gender persecution will be most visible and identifiable as such when it is committed by a cultural Other. So the commonality of gender oppression and homophobia is disguised by attributing abuse to culture (Macklin 1995, p. 271). Or, as Razack points out: racial and cultural othering, as an important part of how [a woman's asylum] claim is presented, arise initially from the need for a refugee claimant to establish that she has a well-founded fear of persecution from which her own state will not or cannot protect her. The simplest and most effective means of doing so is to activate in the panel members an old imperial formula of the barbaric and chaotic Third World and by implication, a more civilized First World (Razack 1995, p. 69). This analysis is highly relevant to a research project with policy-related as well as scholarly ambitions. The most promising way of supporting women's asylum claims in the courts is usually to argue that the claimant is fleeing from an oppressively patriarchal regime to seek refuge in the liberal West, reinforcing a simplified 'us' and 'them' concept of culture in which the individual woman can appear to be a pathetic victim. This is illustrated well in relation to FGM. In 2006, in the UK, the House of Lords granted asylum to a woman from Sierra Leone fleeing FGM stating that: 'Even the lower classes of Sierra Leonean society regard uninitiated [non-FGM] indigenous women as an abomination fit only for the worst sort of sexual exploitation'. 38 The implication is that, in contrast to rational Western individuals, Sierra Leoneans are bound to act in certain ways by their culture. In this example, the interests of the claimant are best served by reinforcing stereotypes of backward cultures. It would be difficult for an advocate to bring in the kind of contextual factors that would lead to a less simplistic portrayal of cultures and, at the same time, pursue the best interests of the client in these cases.
Leti Volpp shows how narratives such as this have been developed and deployed in the name of women's protection: 'colonialist and imperialist discourse which opposes tradition (East) and modernity (West), and which associates East with ancient ritual, despotism, and barbarity, and West with progress, democracy and enlightenment' (Volpp 1996(Volpp , pp. 1588(Volpp -1589. Sexual and gender violence is only 'cultural' when it happens in a non-Western country or within a minority community in the West. Feminist theory has interrogated cultural relativism and the use of a cultural defence in courts to defend men who abuse women (Coleman 1998;Nussbaum 2000, pp. 48-50;Phillips 2003;Volpp 1996). Yet, here we have a situation where cultural stereotypes can work to the advantage of groups of individuals seeking protection in the face of a hostile immigration climate and in need of all the strategies and tools that are available.
This presents a problem for advocates and legal representatives in such cases: they can 'buy into' cultural stereotypes when these seem likely to work to their client's advantage in leading to a grant of international protection, or they can reject such strategies as reinforcing gendered cultural stereotypes and risk acting against their client's immediate interests. The dilemma has been articulated by Volpp, writing about the use of cultural defences in criminal cases in North America: The first issue we face is the strong tension between helping an individual person and the broader effects of employing stereotypes. (…) What do we do then if we want to help an individual woman? Do we want to say that her horrific barbaric culture that condones these practices from which she has absolutely no escape, led to these bad acts or led to her being trapped, or led to her not fleeing? Are we using racism to get rid of sexism? Is there a way in which we are relying on certain kinds of problematic descriptions that buy into already existing preconceptions about our communities to help individual women? We know there are broader stereotypes out there and that is why we think they work and that is why we might use them. We need to consider these implications (Volpp 2002, p. 4).
Volpp is concerned by the strategy of deploying cultural stereotypes to help individual women. Nonetheless, for the refugee paradigm to function effectively for women, the USA (or UK, Germany or Italy) has to be presumed to be a site of liberation. Women's claims will be best served by depicting them as victims not only of abuse that is equivalent to persecution, but also abuse that is different to the regular day-to-day violence against women that occurs in Western 'refugee-receiving countries'. This argument is equally applicable to SOGI asylum: in the case of a lesbian woman from an African country, particularly a country where same-sex relations are illegal but the law is not enforced, it would be a reckless or overly confident advocate who did not deploy the ideal narrative of an individual who comes to realise how different she is to her fellow intolerant homophobic citizens and embraces European values and freedoms as an alternative. In seeking to undermine cultural stereotypes without damaging the asylum claims of women and sexual and gender minorities, feminist scholarship on agency and choice is a useful resource and is the subject of the next section.

Recognising Agency
We have argued that, while intersectionality will be critical to understanding the experiences that are the focus of this work, it needs to be accompanied by an analysis that interrogates prevalent understandings of culture and cultural identity. What these discourses share is a recognition of context and agency. They illustrate how successfully patriarchal, capitalist and neo-liberal forces have diverted attention from the gender and 'race' oppression and exploitation of the West by focusing on the extreme abuses of women at the hands of non-Western state and non-state actors, at the expense of a focus on their own misdeeds. The writers we discussed disrupt the simple story of illiberal regimes perpetuating illiberal practices against SOGI minorities. They also draw attention to the way that gender and cultural or ethnic affiliations come together to deny agency to women and a range of minorities -a phenomenon that is nowhere truer than in the field of asylum, where we are presented with the 'vulnerable' (or thus rendered) displaced woman seeking Western protection (ICIBI 2018, p. 40). The danger is in the attribution of a cultural group identity to the 'other'. What is lost is the agency of both victim and perpetrators of 'cultural practices' and that has implications on various levels for asylum, as we discuss in subsequent chapters.
Elsewhere, feminism has both prioritised and problematised choice. Marilyn Friedman develops the concept of autonomy in connection with a specific definition of identity based on the perspectives, values, wants and commitments that matter to her. To live autonomously is to live in accordance with those priorities. However, Friedman draws attention to the constraints within which agency is exercised in a way that is particularly relevant to SOGI claimants, arguing that even lives of suffering can afford opportunities to exercise agency: 'A valiant, noble, inspiring sort of autonomy emerges when someone stubbornly preserves or pursues what she deeply cares about during a time of suffering or tragedy and against hostile opposition' (Friedman 2003, p. 26). We can apply this conceptualisation of autonomy to understand the decisions made by, for example, a lesbian woman who is unable to live openly in her home country and 'chooses' to leave to seek asylum in Europe, even though this means separation from her children. Martha Nussbaum, writing to address the 'unequal human capabilities of women', attributes it to the failure to see women as 'ends' in themselves (Nussbaum 2000, pp. 1-2) and develops a political approach to gender justice based on 'capabilities' -'what people are actually able to do and to be' -while also questioning the conditions in which choices are made. Finally, feminism has been instrumental in challenging definitions of Western subjects as individuals, making life choices in contrast with non-Western subjects lacking in agency (Madhok et al. 2013). This is particularly valuable in considering how to extend asylum protection to groups including women and SOGI minorities without framing them as eternal victims (Henry 2013).
In this section, using Okin's work as a launch pad, we have identified discourses that explicitly or implicitly critique her analysis in ways that are helpful to an understanding of SOGI asylum. These volumes are not only an academic contribution, but also seek to make recommendations for improving asylum for SOGI minorities in Europe. That leads us to ask how the intellectual and practical work of exposing neo-colonial discourses can coexist with the ongoing imperative of protecting women and SOGI minorities from abuse. One could argue that deploying cultural stereotypes is a necessary evil in the case of asylum claims by women and SOGI minorities. However this argument is flawed, not only because of the wider damage of what Narayan has called 'the package picture of cultures', but also in individual asylum cases (Narayan 2000). First, not everyone who is fleeing sexual or genderbased violence is able to conform to cultural stereotypes. Second, if successful asylum claims for women and SOGI minorities rely on extreme contrasts between conditions for these groups in the host country and the country of origin, then people seeking asylum and those who support them will have an interest in seeing 'refugee-producing countries' maintain the harshest, most misogynistic, most homophobic and most transphobic laws and regimes. Third, the intersection of a gender and group-based identity to deny agency perpetuates the binaries of a Western individual subject with agency and a non-Western 'other' without agency.
In terms of solutions, feminist approaches to dismantling homogenising portrayals of the cultural woman 'other' often rely on enhanced voice and agency for women from different cultures, as have campaigners in relation to SOGI minorities. We discuss feminist writers' analysis of choice and agency above. However, in the area of asylum law these strategies are probably the hardest to apply, because they come into conflict with the fixed categories of victim and saviour, generally relied upon by decision-makers, even if only implicitly. One of the challenges we face here is to make recommendations for improving asylum processes for SOGI claimants that do not rely on deploying a 'package picture of cultures' that persecute their SOGI minorities. While this debate neither solves gender inequality nor provides a solution to SOGI asylum, it does identify themes to shape what follows: essentialism, difference, culture, agency.

Queer Theoretical Approaches to SOGI Asylum
Moving to our third body of work, queer theoretical approaches have an obvious bearing on the subject of SOGI asylum. Sexual orientation and gender identity are two categories that are often either problematically conflated or treated as separate entities of identification and experience. As we show in this section, a queer theoretical approach can help us to understand how sex, gender, and sexuality are intrinsically linked. As we will demonstrate, the light that queer theories shed on these categories, as well as their theoretical framing of 'identity', can help understand the legal and social experiences of SOGI claimants. In addition, these approaches can be productively used to pursue (fairer) decision-making. The intersections of sexuality with 'race', gender and class alone do not fully explain the particular experiences of these SOGI minorities who lack protection, go through the asylum process -where they have to prove their SOGI -and are seen and perceived by other people as 'asylum seekers' (and the particular connotations and stereotypes that come with it). Therefore, in order to acknowledge the particular experiences of SOGI claimants, intersectional queer approaches need to include 'refugeeness' as a category in their analyses. As we argue, not only does 'refugeeness' need to be added to intersectional analysis, but also 'space', as space shapes these intersectional experiences in particular ways and is co-constitutive of sexuality (and other categories). Our analysis in the subsequent chapters will be led by these theoretical approaches, and in turn will add new understandings to queer theories in general, and queer geographies in particular.
Queer theories emerged as a body of literature in diverse fields of studies in the early 1990s (feminist theories and lesbian and gay studies have been crucial in this development) and has since then been influential in many different academic disciplines and areas of research. Here, we do not aim to give a comprehensive overview of published work in the field of queer theories; instead, we will focus on those approaches that we consider most helpful and relevant for our analysis, and in particular for understanding the legal and social experiences of SOGI claimants.
We begin with a short overview of queer theories' main ideas with regard to the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality and the conceptualisation of identity. We then look at queer theoretical approaches that bring in intersectional thinking -building on the intersectional feminist writing discussed above (Sect. 3.3.2).
Here, we will we argue that queer studies not only need to be intersectional, but also need to include the experience of being a queer asylum claimant in their analysis and production of theoretical and analytical frameworks. The same counts for the field of 'queer geography', which offers useful approaches for analysing the social experiences of queer refugees, which we discuss in Sect. 3.4.3. This field explores 'the ways in which space is sexed and sex is spaced, or in other words, the ways in which the spatial and the sexual constitute each other' (Taylor 1997, p. 3). While work published in this area will be useful for our analysis, with our particular focus on how queer refugees experience certain spaces and how their identities are shaped by these spaces, our research adds a new understanding to this field. We show that the relationship between queer refugee identities and spaces are shaped by 'refugeeness'. We argue that both 'space' and 'refugeeness' are categories that need to be included in intersectional analyses. Finally, we summarise how these understandings of sex, gender, sexuality, identity, intersectionality and space may be used for decision-making processes and social policies.

Queer Theoretical Understanding of Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Identity
Since the 1990s, queer theorists have offered new ways of thinking the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality. These poststructuralist theorists consider these categories and the relationship between them not as natural or biologically determined, but as socially, legally and historically produced. Queer theorists conceptualise sexuality as the product of social processes, as regulated and produced, and as constantly changing (see, for instance , Butler 1990;Sedgwick 2008;Warner 1993). Furthermore, they define sexuality as institutionalised in the ways in which 'in the everyday political terrain, contests over sexuality and its regulation are generally linked to views of social institutions and norms of the most basic sort' (Warner 1993, p. xiii). As Chaps. 4 onwards suggest, the institutionalisation of sexuality is also seen in the asylum process.
By drawing on the ground-breaking work of Michel Foucault, especially his first volume of the History of Sexuality (1990), queer theorists challenge the idea of thinking of sexuality in terms of fixed identities. As Foucault showed, this Western understanding of fixed sexual identities has its roots in the late nineteenth century, when psychiatric, legal, moral, religious and medical discourses emerged that categorised people into different sexual human beings and produced sexual subjects: The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality (Foucault 1990, p. 43). During that time, 'the homosexual' came into being as a distinct 'species', one that is deviant and 'abnormal'. Whereas prior to that time the main concern was about sexual practices (such as sodomy), in the late nineteenth century a distinct sexual identity ('the homosexual') was created. Consequently, as Foucault's work demonstrates, Western understandings of sexuality are based on the concept of identity. This distinction between practice or behaviour and identity is one that has a particular significance in relation to SOGI asylum as highlighted throughout this work, and in particular in Chap. 10.
Queer theorists draw on Foucault, but take his ideas further by demonstrating that the fixedness of sexual identities is based on polarisations including hetero/ homo, male/female and masculine/feminine. They challenge the idea that these categories are based on fixed binaries and are 'naturally' linked (Butler 1990;Jagose 1996;Sedgwick 2008;Warner 1993). Queer theorists destabilise these binaries by decoupling sex, gender and sexual desire, and by conceptualising gender and sexuality as a constant work-in-progress (Warner 1993, p. xiii).
In her book Gender Trouble (1990), the most prominent queer theorist, Judith Butler, explains the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality as follows: 'The heterosexualisation of desire requires and institutes the production of discrete and asymmetrical oppositions between "feminine" and "masculine," where these are understood as expressive attributes of "male" and "female"' (Butler 1990, p. 23). The 'natural order' of heterosexuality is maintained through a fixed binary system of sex and gender, and this binarism is necessary for compulsory heterosexuality. In other words, we have an underlying assumption that someone is born as either male or female, then presents themselves through either a masculine or feminine gender, and is attracted to the opposite sex. Butler argues that there is a link between gender and (hetero)sexuality in the ways in which 'under conditions of normative heterosexuality, policing gender is sometimes used as a way of securing heterosexuality' (Butler 1999, p. xii). But what we take as the internal essence of gender is manufactured through repetitive gendered stylisation of the body. In that sense, gender is performative; it is not a noun but a verb. There is no pre-existing gender. Gender is performatively produced through the repetitive, compulsory citation of gendered norms: 'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results' (Butler 1999, p. 33). The ways in which gender is policed and enforced affects everyone, 'but has particularly dangerous outcomes for trans people' (Spade 2015, p. 9). This becomes most obvious when looking at the murder rates of trans people worldwide but is also evident in everyday experiences of nonbinary and trans people in a binary gendered world, such as when using a public bathroom, for instance, when verbal and physical harassment is often experienced (Spade 2015).
These theoretical ideas are useful for the analysis of the legal and social experience of SOGI claimants in several ways. First, it needs to be recognised that Western concepts and labels may not capture the ways in which SOGI claimants understand and express their sexual orientation and gender identity (Lee and Brotman 2011). As Calogero Giametta (2014, p. 587) points out, Western understandings of sexuality are often problematic for asylum claimants, who 'negotiate their sexual and gender identities across cultural constructions of gender liminality and sexual identity that do not match the repertoires of Western LGBTI identifications and lifestyles'. Sexuality is often lived in much more fluid ways, without the need to conform to fixed identity labels as it is common in Western societies (see, for instance, Wekker's 2006, fascinating study of a women's community in Surinam). This can be problematic, if decision-makers make decisions on SOGI claims through the lens of Western conceptualisations of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, queer theorists show that sexual identity is fluid and subject to change during the course of a lifetime (Jagose 1996;Seidman 1993), which may be helpful to asylum decision-making, by challenging the simplistic categorising imperative that characterises asylum procedures as the basis for determining whether an individual should be granted protection or not.
Second, the Western model of sexuality takes gay identity and homosexual conduct as interchangeable and 'presumes clarity of boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual identity and requires public expression of private and sexual behaviour' (Morgan 2006, pp. 151-152). This can lead to the conflation of sexual conduct and sexual identity in decision-making, and a failure to recognise the complexities of sexual identity (O'Leary 2008). SOGI claimants may then be expected to be 'out and proud' and conform to Western stereotypes of what it means to be LGBTIQ+ (for example, visiting gay bars, participating in lesbian and gay groups and Gay Prides, etc.) (Bennett and Thomas 2013;Morgan 2006). These expectations of conformity to Western notions of homosexual behaviour make it more difficult for SOGI asylum claimants to 'demonstrate' and 'prove' their SOGI.
Third, persecution on grounds of sexuality is often linked to how gender is performed, demonstrating the links between gender and sexuality that Butler has so powerfully demonstrated (see above). As Nora Markard argues: Gender doesn't simply differentiate between "men" and "women", to the exclusion of inter* bodies and certain trans* and inter* identities. It is also fundamentally heteronormative, predetermining the acceptable sexual preference and the specific way in which to "do gender". (…) An intersectional approach can make these dimensions visible in a more differentiated manner (Markard 2016, p. 56).
Understanding the co-constitution of gender and sexuality can improve decisionmaking, especially in terms of how persecution is assessed, but there are also intersections with other categories that need to be taken into account.

Intersectional Queer Approaches
Focusing on gender and sexuality as the main categories of analysis, the early queer theoretical approaches were criticised for the lack of discussion of intersections with other categories. While above we discussed intersectionality as it developed in relation to feminism and 'race', there is now an extensive body of work that brings in an intersectional approach to queer theories (see, for instance, Taylor et al. 2010), and looks specifically at the intersections of sexuality with socio-economic class (McDermott 2010;Penney 2015;Taylor 2007), disability (Inckle 2010), 'race' (Kuntsman and Miyake 2008;Mercer and Julien 1988;Somerville 2000;Stoler 1995) and religion (Bakshi et al. 2016;Giametta 2014;Puar 2007). There has also been work specifically on bisexuality, long under-represented, invisible and marginalised in sexualities and queer scholarship (Klesse 2018;Monro et al. 2017). As Surya Monro, Sally Hines and Antony Osborne (2017, p. 671) argue, especially 'the peak years of queer theory -the mid to late 1990s -was a period in which scholars were particularly silent about bisexuality'. This is surprising, as the category of bisexuality 'raises important critical questions about the intersections of sexuality and gender, and the epistemologies of these categories' (Monro et al. 2017, p. 675). These questions help us understand the assessment of bisexual people's asylum claims in subsequent chapters, and also why bisexual asylum claimants are rendered invisible by the asylum system.
There has also been an increasing interest in the relationship between sexuality and 'race', or the 'raciality' of queerness. As Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake (2008, p. 5) argue: We believe that "raciality" and "queerness" should always be interrogated together as queerness/raciality in order to hear the invisible, to see the inaudible. How and/or what are the ways in which "raciality" becomes silent and/or silenced within the queer discourse and practice? What do these silences do and how can they be conceptualised? Black and Asian queer theorists have challenged the White male and Western focus of queer theories (see, for instance, Eng et al. 2005;Ferguson 2004;Gopinath 2005;Johnson and Henderson 2005). Some scholars have extended Foucault's analysis and shown that the formation of sexual subjects cannot be separated from the formation of racial subjects, that racism and ideologies of sexual morality actually work together (Mercer and Julien 1988;Somerville 2000;Stoler 1995). In this context, Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien argue that 'the prevailing Western concept of sexuality… already contains racism. Historically the European construction of sexuality coincides with the epoch of imperialism and the two inter-connect' (Mercer and Julien 1988, p. 106, original emphasis).
Others have explored the relationship between normative constructions of gender, sexuality and 'race' in the context of nations and borders, or queer diasporas (Gopinath 2005;Manalansan 2006). These scholars also encourage us to think about sexual identities from a postcolonial perspective (Manalansan 2006;Badruddoja Rahman 2006) and decolonise queer studies by bringing in transnational perspectives on the studies of sexuality, to show how sexuality, 'race', gender and religion intersect transnationally (Bakshi et al. 2016).
To adopt a transnational perspective when looking at these intersections is particularly important when considering how 'homonationalist' discourses shape the asylum process and the legal and social experiences of queer refugees. In Terrorist Assemblages, Jasbir Puar develops the conceptual frame of 'homonationalism' for understanding the complexities of 'how "acceptance" and "tolerance" for gay and lesbian subjects have become a barometer by which the right to and capacity for national sovereignty is evaluated' (Puar 2013, p. 33). Puar is critical of the narrative of progression of LGBTIQ+ rights, which includes some individuals while excluding others. As she argues, these rights are used to reinforce boundaries between a 'civilised' and 'uncivilised world', with religious values in particular constructed as 'backward'. In this way, LGBTIQ+ human rights discourses play a critical role in defining a racialised Other whose lack of progress is proved by their rejection of sexual and gay equality.
Puar argues that, in our times, 'an exceptional form of national heteronormativity is now joined by an exceptional form of national homonormativity' 39 (Puar 2007, p. 2), and some homosexual bodies are now 'worthy of protection by nation states' (Puar 2013, p. 337). Homonationalist discourses produce the idea of Western nations as 'LGBTIQ+ tolerant' in contrast to non-Western 'LGBTIQ+ intolerant' nations. This discourse is shaped by neoliberal capitalist structures, for instance, the tourist industry that defines gay-friendly and not-gay-friendly destinations, and recognition by the economic market of the consumer-value of SOGI minorities and the 'pink pound'. As Puar points out, these definitions are coupled with religion, in that Muslim-majority states are perceived as being particularly intolerant of SOGI minorities. The consequence of this is that the 'liberal' Western gay subject is defined in contrast with the 'oppressed' and/or homophobic non-Western subject (Hubbard and Wilkinson 2015, p. 605). The intersections of sexuality, 'race' and religion become visible here in the ways in which 'Muslim' and 'gay' are seen as incompatible identities, and the conflation of 'race' and religion leads to a discourse 39 Heteronormativity is a concept coined by Michael Warner (1991) and describes the ways in which heterosexuality functions as the 'norm', as a given, the 'default'. The concept is gendered and based on (fixed) gender roles/expectations. Homonormativity is a concept coined by Lisa Duggan and describes 'a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions -such as marriage, and its call for monogamy and reproduction -but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption' (Duggan 2002, p. 179). that constructs Islam as a homophobic religion (Haritaworn et al. 2008;Puar 2007), failing to recognise the voices within often small and under-resourced organisations around the world interpreting faith in LGBTIQ+ friendly ways. 40 In that respect, an apparent intolerance towards SOGI minorities is often used as justification for Islamophobia (Hubbard and Wilkinson 2015).
As we will dissect further in later chapters, these discourses have an effect on the asylum process that SOGI claimants go through, as well as on their lived experiences. With regard to the asylum process, the perceived incompatibility between 'Muslim' and 'gay' affiliations makes it particularly difficult for LGBTIQ+ Muslim individuals to secure international protection due to the expectation that they either reject their religion to be truly LGBTIQ+ or refrain from being LGBTIQ+ to be truly religious. As Giametta's (2014) research shows, being openly religious can undermine someone's asylum claim. Decision-makers often perceive religion, non-Western religions in particular, as patriarchal and homophobic, and religious believers are therefore viewed as backward, irrational and bound by tradition. Asylum claimants are expected to embrace progress and separate themselves from the 'backward non-West'. Claimants, as well as lawyers and supporters, might cocreate these homonationalist discourses by presenting a narrative of 'suffering' in the 'backward' homophobic country of origin.
In terms of social experiences, these volumes look at how gender, sexuality, 'race' and religion intersect, including the ways in which SOGI claimants experience sexism, transphobia, homophobia, racism and Islamophobia. The intersectional queer approaches that we have outlined here are useful, not only for understanding the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality, but also how other categories intersect with them, or are co-constitutive of them. Yet, what is missing in intersectional approaches is the particular experience of being a 'refugee', an experience which may include but is not fully covered by an analysis of 'race' or nationality. As our analysis demonstrates, the experiences of SOGI refugees are shaped by the many different identities and identifiers that they choose or which are imposed on them, as is true for any individual, but also by their unique experiences within the asylum process. In the next section, we argue that it is also important to bring in the notion of 'space' when looking at the intersectional experiences of SOGI refugees.

Queer Geographies
The relationship between sexuality and space in the lives of queer refugees is particularly interesting. To analyse the social experiences of queer refugees, we draw on concepts and theories developed in the field of 'queer geographies'. As Kath Browne, Jason Lim and Gavin Brown (Browne et al. 2009, p. 4) argue: 40 Such as Imaan in the UK or Al-Fitrah Foundation in South Africa.
Sexuality -its regulation, norms, institutions, pleasures and desires -cannot be understood without understanding the spaces through which it is constituted, practiced and lived. Sexuality manifests itself through relations that are specific to particular spaces and through the space-specific practices by which these relations become enacted.
Queer refugees have to leave what is often the only location they have known, their country of origin, because of their sexuality and, when arriving in the host country, asylum spaces, such as refugee camps or dispersal accommodation, again shape the ways in which they can experience and live out their sexuality. The implications of this are further explored in Chaps. 5, 8 and 10.
Studies in the field of sexual geographies have proliferated since the mid-1990s, demonstrating the relationship between sexuality and space; how spaces are sexually structured and how space is constitutive in shaping sexuality (see, for instance, Bell and Valentine 1995;Browne et al. 2009;Doan 2015;Hubbard 2012;Johnston and Longhurst 2009). They have demonstrated the ways in which sexuality is made in mundane interactions in certain places and how those interactions sexualise space. In particular, they have shown how everyday spaces (such as the street, the home, the workplace) are constituted as heterosexual through repetitive heterosexual performances (Bell and Valentine 1995;Johnston and Valentine 1995;Valentine 1993Valentine , 1996. This literature is helpful for analysing the experiences of SOGI refugees, and how they experience everyday spaces as sexualised such as the heterosexualisation of accommodation centres. Since the early 2000s, these studies have also increasingly looked at processes of inclusion and exclusion in LGBTIQ+ spaces, especially 'gay villages' all over the world, particularly in the UK, North America, Australia, Singapore and South Africa (see, for instance, Andersson 2015; Binnie and Skeggs 2004;Caluya 2008;Han 2015;Held 2017;Nero 2005;Tan 2015;Tucker 2009;Visser 2003Visser , 2013. In this literature, sexual geographers have shown that, within these spaces, exclusions are produced on grounds of identifiers other than sexuality. In this respect, it has been argued that particular lesbian and gay identities are constructed in LGBTIQ+ spaces that exclude differences on grounds of class (Rooke 2007;Taylor 2007), 'race', (dis)ability, sexual desires, and gender (appearance) (Casey 2004;Skeggs 1999), and produce normativities and a certain form of homonormativity (Bell and Binnie 2004;Brown 2014). These studies have also revealed that 'gay villages' focus on an able-bodied, White, middle-class, young clientele and are male dominated.
While there have been interesting studies conducted on the racialisation of LGBTIQ+ spaces in Australia (Caluya 2008), the USA (Andersson 2015;Han 2015;Nero 2005), South Africa (Livermon 2014;Tucker 2009;Visser 2003Visser , 2013 and the UK (Bassi 2006;Held 2017;Kawale 2003Kawale , 2004, none of these studies have explicitly taken the experiences of SOGI refugees in these spaces into account. These studies are revealing, however, in the ways in which they demonstrate exclusionary and discriminatory practices based on 'race' (for example, clubs' door policies), and how sexual desires are shaped by 'race' through fetishisations, exoticisations, or dislike. Queer geographies have not only shown how the spaces we inhabit are made through our repetitive actions, but also how these spaces shape us; the way that we do what we are supposed to do, what is perceived to be common sense, in any given place. Space is not simply an empty entity or container that can be filled with things or people. It is not dead and fixed, but alive, active, fluid and always under construction. Space is active and always 'in process' (Crang and Thrift 2000, p. 3). Building on this understanding informs our recognition of how queer refugee subjectivities are shaped by space, especially asylum spaces such as refugee accommodation centres (Chap. 8).
Asylum spaces are shaped by 'refugeeness' and shape 'refugeeness', in particular through the ways in which people feel 'out of place', or as 'space invaders' (Puwar 2004). As Nirmal Puwar (2004, p. 8) describes the relationship between bodies and space: Some bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, while others are marked out as trespassers, who are, in accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined (politically, historically and conceptually), circumscribed as being "out of place". Not being the somatic norm, they are space invaders.
As it will become clear in our analysis, certain spaces are marked as 'refugee spaces', whereas others are marked as 'LGBTIQ+ spaces', often leaving SOGI refugees feeling out of place in most spaces.
In sum, Queer theoretical approaches provide a frame of analysis for understanding, on one hand, how the concepts of gender and sexuality are utilised in decision-making processes and, on the other, how they shape the experiences of SOGI refugees and people seeking asylum and their sense of themselves. Bringing in an intersectional approach to queer theories is important, as it gives us a tool to analyse how gender and sexuality are co-constituted by other social categories such as 'race', class and religion. Taking intersectional approaches seriously means to 'ask the other question' (Matsuda 1991); for instance, in accounts on sexuality, we need to ask 'where is gender here?', in accounts on gender we need to ask 'where is "race" here?', and so forth. This is vital for exploring the socio-legal experiences of SOGI claimants. We suggest that intersectional queer theories can be productively used in SOGI asylum cases to analyse whether there is a Western bias in decisionmaking and how credibility assessments might draw on racialised sexual stereotypes. Our study looks at how asylum law and policies play a role in producing these categories, but also how they might be shaped and reconstructed by SOGI claimants themselves (Berger 2009). Importantly, we argue that in order to acknowledge the particular experiences of SOGI claimants, queer intersectional approaches need to include 'refugeeness' as a category in their analyses. Finally, from queer geographies we take the interrogation of space and the way that space shapes these intersecting experiences in particular ways and is co-constitutive of sexuality (and other categories).

Concluding Remarks
Various themes have emerged in this chapter, including dignity, essentialism, cultural differences, space, agency, equality, and above all identity or personhoodthe concept underpinning all asylum claims in relation to credibility and the question: Are you really gay (or lesbian, bisexual, transgender)? Identification of these themes helps us to understand that, while SOGI asylum claimants have much in common and are often homogenised as a group, they have individual, distinct experiences and perspectives that cannot be overlooked. So, while necessarily identifying commonalities in our work based on the shared characteristics that people possess, and which are the focus for the protection they claim as well as the discrimination they undergo, we return to identity and identities throughout these volumes as a way of humanising the 'queer refugee'.
To conclude, the theoretical mix of human rights, feminism and queer theories constitutes the lens through which we will analyse our fieldwork and the parameters against which we will assess the asylum systems under comparison, including the following specific insights: • Human rights are critical in facilitating an interpretation of the Refugee Convention that is grounded in the idea of human rights in light of the ideal category of 'inclusiveness' and through an anti-stereotyping approach, which requires individualised assessment and solutions to avoid the continuing marginalisation and inequality affecting SOGI minorities in the refugee context. • From feminism, we take a recognition of 'culture' as a problematic term in its current usage. We critique essentialist frameworks that fail to recognise the different facets of asylum claimants' identities and we also interrogate agency, the individual agency and potential for agency, of all 'actors' in the SOGI asylum field. • Queer theories inform our understanding of the fluidity of sexuality and gender (and by implication, of other identities such as 'refugee'), and from queer geography we take our questioning of location and space in its broadest sense as critical to LGBTIQ+ asylum experiences, ensuring asylum systems recognise the fluidity of sexuality and gender, and are mindful of how refugeeness affects people's legal and social experiences.
As a necessary caveat, we recognise that it would be naïve to argue that blending aspects of human rights, feminism and queer theories can fully explain and address the injustices of SOGI asylum in Europe. Indeed, it might be argued that it takes us down a narrow neoliberal path that 'solves' SOGI asylum only for those willing and able to transform themselves to fit the Western individual consumer-citizen model, or its LGBTIQ+ alter ego. Writers such as Kapur and Otto (Kapur 2018;Otto 2017) address whether feminist and queer politics benefit from deploying human rights or rather lose their radical, questioning and liberatory edge. Put simply, does extending human rights to women and gay people merely extend patriarchal and heteronormative entitlements and values to some Others -putting women in the boardroom, letting lesbians marry, granting asylum to the right kind of 'gay' -while leaving racism, misogyny, heteronormativity and neoliberalism fundamentally intact? Our answer is both theoretical and practical: a single-lens approach to the 'problem' of SOGI asylum leaves many questions unanswered and, more importantly, is not able to address the injustices in current European approaches to SOGI claims. Our argument is that, without dismantling existing asylum frameworks, there are incremental improvements to be made for SOGI minorities by looking to a wider range of knowledge sources, of which human rights, feminism and queer theories appear to us as the most helpful.
We will return to these critical parameters and lenses throughout these volumes and in particular in Chaps. 10 and 11, where we consider how they help (theoretically) to improve our understanding of the European SOGI asylum panorama and (practically) to inform our recommendations.
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