Jaquiss, ‘Hostility, Resistance and Hope’, 2026
- Category: Literature
- Source: Academic
- Subject: Sexual Orientation/Sexuality, Gender Identity, Refugee/Asylum, LGBT+
- Place: United Kingdom
- Year: 2026
- File: 1_CJ_PhD_04.26
- URL: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/644302/1/1_CJ_PhD_04.26.pdf
Catherine Sarah Jaquiss, ‘Hostility, Resistance and Hope: The operation of space and affect in LGBTQ+ asylum litigation’, PhD thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2026
Abstract
This thesis explores how lawyers react to and participate in the problematic aspects of litigating LGBTQ+ asylum claims, using the lens of space and affect theory. There is a significant existing body of work identifying the problematic ways in which LGBTQ+ asylum claims are decided internationally. I complement and enrich those perspectives with a novel focus on the spatial and affective experiences and responses of lawyers litigating LGBTQ+ asylum claims in the UK. I use a novel
methodological approach, combining autoethnography, space and affect theory, queer theory, doctrinal analysis and rich, qualitative empirical work (arising out of interviews with UK-based lawyers) to understand the spatial and affective dimensions of the litigation of LGBTQ+ asylum claims in the UK. I begin the thesis by weaving together perspectives from existing scholarship with autoethnographic reflections, before undertaking a spatial and affective analysis of national and international LGBTQ+ asylum law. By doing so, I identify the novelty and value of my thesis and its focus on space and affect. I go on to explore my novel methodological approach. Finally, I present my analyses of my participants’ contributions on the themes of hostility; resistance and complicity; and anger, hope and hopelessness. In this thesis, I analyse how space and affect interact to produce a complex terrain for LGBTQ+ asylum litigation in the UK. I explore how lawyers seek to orient the different actors in the court room in this context, including their LGBTQ+ clients; and how they themselves are affected. Through this thesis, I reveal a textured, contingent, responsive and sometimes queer notion of legal practice through which diverse and divergent identities might be recognised and protected in law, even if the problematic or damaging aspects of litigation cannot be fully mitigated.