Acknowledgments / Introduction / 1. Queering the Queer Migration to Liberation Nation Narrative / 2. Becoming an ‘Authentic’ SOGI Refugee / 3. How to be Gay (Refugee Version) / 4. Producing Documentation for SOGI Refugee Claims / 5. Discourse and Emotion in SOGI Refugee Hearings / 6. National Documentation Packages and Expert Witness Reports / 7. The Challenge of Home / Conclusion: The New Normal / Bibliography
David A.B. Murray is Professor of Anthropology at York University, Canada.
Real Queer? weaves together ethnographic detail, reflexive
observations, and salient theoretical concepts to reveal the
complex negotiations of identity and performance, law and emotions,
and competing discourses of sexuality and gender among differently
situated actors in the high-stakes refugee determination process. .
. .Murray’s work engages, informs, and challenges readers. . . . In
conclusion, Real Queer? will serve as an excellent text for upper
undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropology and queer,
migration, and gender studies but will also be valuable reading for
immigrant-serving and LGBT organizations who support SOGI refugee
claimants as well as for those who adjudicate their claims.
*American Anthropologist*
In the proliferation of public attention on the sexual orientation
and gender identity (SOGI) refugee in Canada, David AB Murray’s
Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the
Canadian Refugee Apparatus is a compelling and significant critical
examination of how this category is (re)produced and its
relationship to a larger discourse of Canadian homonationalism....
The greatest strength of Real Queer? is its integration of
ethnographic work into a broader framework that examines how
homonationalist discourses are constructed. Murray’s ability to
work with multiple scales and sites is one of the great
achievements of this book.... Murray’s Real Queer? Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee
Apparatus has set itself up as a critical volume for both queer and
refugee theorists, and has admirably bridged these two areas of
research through the contestation of parallel, and intertwined,
hegemonic narratives. Even as the construction of the hegemonic
‘queer migration to liberation nation’ narrative is persuasively
set up, the agency of individual actors in resisting such
discourses also remains centre stage.
*International Journal of Refugee Law*
Real Queer? is a welcome addition to the growing field of queer
migration studies, offering a detailed case study of how lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) asylum seekers are viewed and
assessed by actors working within and around the Canadian “refugee
apparatus.” Murray’s term aptly frames the Immigration and Refugee
Board (IRB) as functioning, primarily, to solidify the ideology of
the liberal nation-state.... His book offers important theoretical
and methodological contributions to the interdisciplinary study of
migration and sexuality, revealing the power of nation-states to
regulate and discipline the queer immigrants attempting to settle
within their borders.
*Association for Feminist Anthropology*
The product of an intensive ethnographic study of SOGI [sexual
orientation and gender identity] refugee claimants (primarily from
Africa and the Caribbean), refugee support groups, and the
Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) in Toronto, the study provides
detailed and critical insights into the politics of the refugee
claims-making and adjudication process … [T]he book makes a solid
contribution to the interrelated fields of queer migration and SOGI
refugee studies in the Canadian context
*Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees*
The state is deeply invested in the regulation of migrant/refugee
sexuality, but conventional discussions usually ignore these
investments and their consequences for border-crossing. Real Queer
does not, asking instead how some refugees succeed in gaining
entry as queer subjects, how some gain entry with queerness
disguised, and why some are denied entry altogether. Real
Queer displays the human dimensions of the queer refuge experience,
even as it shows that refugee queerness is as much about obedience
and privilege as transgressive sexuality.
*William L. Leap, Professor of Anthropology, American University,
Washington*
Real Queer is a sensitive and trenchant examination of the
challenges, triumphs and failures of LGBT asylum seekers in
Canada. Murray offers a sharply observed and elegantly
rendered rendition of the ambivalences and shifting contours of the
refugee system as laws, lives, and material realities shape
attachments to and distancing from home, nation, and an ideal queer
world. An important work in transnational queer studies that
will set the terms of future research and debates.
*Martin F. Manalansan IV, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign*
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