Antonucci and Siqueira, ‘The Social and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on LGBTTQIA+ migrants and refugees in Brazil’, 2021

Category: Literature
Source: Academic
Subject: Sexual Orientation/Sexuality, Gender Identity, Intersex, Refugee/Asylum, Migration
Place: Americas, Other
Year: 2021
URL: <a href="https://www.networkformigrationmatters.com/post/the-social-and-economic-impact-of-covid-19-on-lgbttqia-migrants-and-refugees-in-brazil">https://www.networkformigrationmatters.com/post/the-social-and-economic-impact-of-covid-19-on-lgbttqia-migrants-and-refugees-in-brazil

Nathália Antonucci and Marina Siqueira, ‘The Social and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on LGBTTQIA+ migrants and refugees in Brazil’, Network for Migration Matters, 15 April 2021

Abstract

The migratory flow to Brazil has been increasing exponentially with the Venezuelan crisis. About 261,000 Venezuelans live in Brazil today[1] and many others wish to cross the border. The profile of migrants and refugees is, unlike the social imaginary, quite heterogeneous in terms of gender, sexuality, age, class, and race. Among these migrants and refugees, some of them identify with the identities that make up the acronym LGBTTQIA+[2] (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Travesti, Queer, Intersex and Asexual and other identities represented by the “+”) and, in addition to the problems related to the Venezuelan socioeconomic crisis, they do not feel safe and have their rights violated in their country.

Many of these trajectories are marked by episodes of violence, suffering, and abandonment that result in silenced potentialities. Migration appears, in most cases, as a way of inhabiting new possibilities for social, political, and economic life. However, after migrating, these people continue to be exposed to structural violence that, like them, also crosses transnational borders and is present in Brazil: xenophobia, racism, LGBTTQIA+phobia, etc.