Migrating through Normativities: Citizen Embodiments to Pass

Many false narratives or ‘fake news’ exists around immigration discourses, such as an immigrant crisis or not having enough land. Furthermore, there is not many existing studies analyzing who or what qualities make up a ‘successful’ migrant, one who achieves citizenship to their migrated destination and builds a home-life there. The silenced qualities of these successful migrants must conform to the nation’s hegemonic body, such as the white, middle-class, heterosexual man in the Western world. Those who deviant or queer these ideal qualities of the migrant or citizen have lower chances of successfully achieving migration, or may have to take on undocumented migrant lifeways. The conditions of ideal/non-ideal migrants are part of the gendered and racialized processes of globalization and migration (see Desai and Rinaldo, 2016).

Furthermore, bodies and communities who deviant from the hegemonic expectations of the citizen/migrant are challenged to either conform, be alienated, or to hide. Transnational feminism should note that it is rare that one hears about queer and/or transgender families, partners, individuals, and/or communities migrating; is this because those identities are not migrating? Perhaps, but consider that their agency to speak that part of themselves is not welcomed, and if they receive citizenship or successful migration, their queerness further marginalizes them as also being migrants and/or marginalized ethnicities. Transnational feminism must then look out for and note the experiences and agencies of queer and trans migrants, as the little access they might have to voicing their concerns are nonetheless important concerns to be accounted for. Queer and trans individuals, families and communities are seeking migration, especially as they may be experiencing isolation from their home communities by their queer identities, but they are isolated and alienated by many locations, socially, politically, and geographically.

Keywords: queering, LGBTQ, non-normative, migrant justice, hegemony

Author: DjangoJane