Gustafsson, ‘LGBTQI+ in the Swedish Asylum Process’, 2020

Elin Gustafsson, ‘LGBTQI+ in the Swedish Asylum Process A Critical Discourse Analysis of Swedish Immigration guidelines for assessing LGBTQI+ asylum seeker’, Malmö University, 2020

Abstract

This thesis analyses how sexual orientation, gender and gender identity is understood and portrayed within the legal guidelines provided for immigration officials who assess claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity in the Swedish asylum process. The analysis conducted is using critical discourse analysis to see if the guidelines include a white heterocis-normative bias in the understanding of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity, and how this may indicate to an institutional bias against LGBTQI+ persons in the Swedish asylum process. To do so this thesis primarily use Queer theory. The results show that there is some level of an institutional bias against LGBTQI+ asylum seeker in the Swedish asylum process based on white hetero-cis-normative understandings of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. These findings are manifested in the forms of Western superiority, stereotypical assumptions about LGBTQI+ persons, as well as binary understandings of gender. The findings of this thesis contribute to research in the queer migration fields, more so to fields with regards of how sexual and gender identities are understood and represented in the asylum process.

Key Words: Queer theory, Hetero-cis-normativity, Gender binary, Queer Asylum, Sweden