Fobear, ‘Queer Refugee Homemaking’, 2023

Katherine Fobear, ‘Queer Refugee Homemaking: Lesbian and Gay Refugees’ Oral Histories and Photovoice Narratives of Home’, in Lê Espiritu Gandhi, E., & Nguyen, V. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (1st ed.), Routledge, 2023, pp. 328-340

Abstract

Research on forced migration has shown that emotion, relationships, and domestic spaces are important for refugees’ sense of home and belonging. Yet, often this work has focused predominantly on heterosexual and cisgender refugee experiences. Through an analysis of lesbian and gay refugee oral narratives and photos, this chapter looks at how lesbian and gay refugees orient their stories of migration, settlement, and feelings of home through intimate relationships, feelings of love, and queer domesticity. The collected oral histories and participatory photography of queer refugees reveal the importance of romantic relationships and the creation of a private home as a central motivation for asylum as well as an orientating device in queer refugees’ construction of home. Reclaiming the right to be intimate with their significant other and creating a private and relatively safe domestic life together shapes queer refugees’ sense of home and belonging.