Charnock, ‘Inescapable Victimhood’, 2020

Jamie Charnock, ‘Inescapable Victimhood: A Queer(y) into Structures, Agency and Victimhood Amongst Queer Refugees in Nairobi’, Master Thesis, University of Vienna, 2020

Abstract

Well-meaning humanitarian advocacy and Western media have long since mobilized public support and funding for refugee issues utilizing images that depict refugees as victims of war, displacement and “unbearable and hopeless poverty”. As a result, refugees have been publicly constructed as victims, a narrative that serves to passivize, collectivise and dehumanise refugees, rendering them homogenous and passive recipients of humanitarian aid. This thesis seeks to address the structure-agency impasse in forced migration research, utilizing Archer’s morphogenic approach to structuration theory to examine how structures enable and constrict the agency of queer refugees both during migration and whilst awaiting resettlement in Kenya. Fifteen in-depth interviews with queer asylum seekers and refugees living in Kenya revealed that whilst the agency of refugees is seriously constrained by structures during migration, participant’s differential experiences of agency and decision-making during migration revealed continuums of reactive migration, shattering the depiction of the unified experience of forced displacement – desperate and void of any agency at all. Furthermore, this study challenges the unidimensional depiction of the refugee, defined by their suffering and flight, exposing multivariate motivations for migration aside from the escape of homophobic violence which include the pursuit of belonging an opportunity. Having explored queer migration profiles and pathways in East Africa, this study then examined how refugees in Kenya are structured into victimhood. Utilizing the morphogenic approach, the structural positioning of refugees into positions of exacerbated vulnerability were highlighted, and the process of (re)creating victim identities through Archer’s structural elaboration was demonstrated. Queer refugees were shown to (re)create victim identities in two ways: (1) owing to the structured exacerbation of vulnerability and barriers to the right to work, refugees are positioned into insecurity and dependency in Nairobi, and (2) owing to funding cuts and slashes to resettlement quotas, queer refugees were positioned to perform victimhood as one of few means of increasing their net gain. As such, this study serves to strongly question the essentialised image of the refugee victim, exploring continuums of agency constriction and enablement which must be understood to provide meaningful refugee assistance. Furthermore, it highlights root causes of refugee disempowerment which must be addressed to provide a…