Professional Documents
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You are cordially invited to attend this event, which will present current research into
the intersections of discourses on sexuality, race/ethnicity and the law. The main focus
is on problematic assumptions which guide the construction of ‘LGBT subjectivities’ in
legal processes that have been designed in laws meant to ‘protect’ people with non-
normative genders or sexualities from persecution and hate crimes. Topics discussed at
the event will include discussions of asylum process (in the UK and beyond) and hate
crime legislation in Catalonia. The focus is on tensions, paradoxes, limitations and gaps
in the construction of ‘rights’ and other legal measures, which create systemic
exclusions that narrow how queer lives can be lived, articulated and understood, often
with deadly consequences for some groups concerned.
There will be three 20 minutes presentations followed by Questions and Answers and a
Discussion.
CHRISTIAN KLESSE (Manchester Met) ‘Bisexuality, Asylum Law and the Biopolitics
of “Bisexual Erasure”’.
KAREN McCARTHY
“When I was an asylum seeker I was in bondage. I was captive. Something is holding
you and want to strangle you to death”
To win recognition as a refugee and become 'documented' most people seeking asylum
on the grounds of their sexuality, and persecution because of it, have to fight for
recognition of their sexuality first. ‘Proving’ sexuality is key, with the majority of
sexuality based cases refused on credibility, i.e. that the claimant is not believed; the
incidence of disbelief has increased since case law in 2009 limited the ability of courts
to send people recognised as LGBT back to their countries of origin to live ’discretely’.
The experience of the Lesbian Immigration Support Group members and volunteers is
that claimants feel pressured to conform to Western, racialized, homonormative
notions of what lesbian sexuality looks like, having spent most of their lives ‘pretending'
NOT to be lesbian, for their own safety. Most members of LISG are escaping from, often
extremely violent, persecution in countries which were once British colonies and where
British imposed, homophobic laws still exist. The impact of this colonial , and continuing,
biopolitical governance creates a legacy of necropolitical results both in the UK and
globally. “and I don’t give a shit about HO and they can’t change that and they can’t
force me to do things. I have a partner and a life and a family, and people who know
that. What do they want?”
Biographical Note
Karen McCarthy is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research
interests include migration, asylum and sexuality; migration and immigration; the
experience of refugees and asylum seekers in further and higher education; reflective
practice and well-being and health in communities. She is the co-author of Nina Held /
Karen McCarthy (2017, forthcoming): “They like you to pretend to be something you are
not”: An exploration of working with the intersections of gender, sexuality, ‘race’,
religion and ‘refugeeness’, through the experience of Lesbian Immigration Support
Group (LISG) members and volunteers, in Nayak, Suryia/ Robbins, Rachel (eds.) The
Activism of Intersectionality in Social Work. London: Routledge. Also, forthcoming co-
author with Janet Batsleer of On the Future of Youth Work with Young Women in Youth
Work: Global Futures. Rotterdam: Sense Publications. (forthcoming)
NÚRIA SADURNÍ
Queer necropolitics and the Catalan law against LGBTphobia
The folding back of certain queer subjects into life and its effects is an issue which has
been addressed by a myriad of scholars. From Lisa Duggan’s notion of homonormativity
to more recent work on homonationalism building on Jasbir Puar’s work, many
analytical tools have been developed to interrogate how the supposed queer inclusion
has taken place and which are the consequences of such a biopolitical movement.
Throughout Europe and North America, current debates on queer issues are moving
towards the framework of hate crimes and hate speech, frequently engaging in
necropolitical logics. Such movement is also gaining momentum in the Catalan queer
arena, where a comprehensive law on LGBTIphobia was passed in 2014. The analysis of
the aforementioned law, within the context of this broader trend, arises several
questions that this paper aims to address: What kind of life does the Catalan law
produce? What kind of life does it reinforce? What life does it create for queer people?
In this movement, what changes and what remains? Which exclusions does it generate?
And, finally, does it produce death, either deferred or directly?
Bio
Núria Sadurní is a lesbofeminist activist and a PhD student on social psychology at the
University of Girona (Catalonia). In her PhD research she interrogates queer inclusions
in Catalonia, particularly focusing in biopolitics, queer necropolitics and
homonationalism.