By Giulia Ghidelli
As a social scientist, I have always found cultural relativism and its interaction with reality fascinating and unsettling, especially in its most dramatic impacts on people’s daily lives. Cultural relativism as a concept entails when certain notions and social constructions are taken for granted and are considered unquestionably true, but they only exist depending on the specific cultural context (e.g. wearing or not wearing certain clothes, habits, ways of greeting, ways of interacting or behaving in particular occasions.). One of my anthropology professors, met at the very beginning of my bachelor, as the opening statement of the first lesson of the Cultural Anthropology class, used to say: “Social conventions are fictions made up by social actors. But, even as fictions, they are extremely damn serious”.
My master’s thesis allowed me to research the asylum procedure for LGBT+ asylum seekers in The Netherlands, and it represented an eye-opener in my conceptualisation of the ideas of queerness belonging to the Global North. Queer asylum issues and the way the protection of sexual minorities is treated by governments and institutions are becoming progressively more relevant topics in academia and policy research. This article aims to contribute to a collective rethinking of our internalised assumptions about queer identities, maybe even about our own identities.
The report “Pride or Shame?” (Jansen, 2019) addresses the fact that Dutch immigration policies recognise that non-heteronormative gender identities and non-heterosexual orientations are still persecuted and criminalised in 72 countries around the world. Since 2010, Dutch policies have become more flexible towards sexual minorities, recognising the dramatic dangers experienced by LGBT+ individuals seeking asylum and fleeing from their home countries.
Nonetheless, Jansen shows how, together with an increased basic understanding, a dramatic diffidence towards LGBT+ asylum seekers emerged and has spread in the policies, mindsets, and institutional actors responsible for assessing asylum applications.
Sabine Jansen (2019), in her research “Pride or shame?”, a report addressing the history and the main flaws of the Dutch policy for the protection of LGBTI asylum seekers (WBV 2014/22, 18 July 2014 section “Social group – sexual orientation”), explores the stereotypes determining the assessment methods used by the IND (Immigratie en Naturalisatie Dienst, the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service) explaining how problematic, essentialising and damaging these assumptions are for queer asylum seekers. The process of seeking asylum for LGBT+ applicants is constituted by “the burden of proof”, as highlighted by Jansen. According to asylum law, they must prove to a commission their sexual orientation and gender identity using hard evidence, such as diaries, text messages, pictures, or statements, and they must be found credible by the commission to have their application accepted.
As effectively illustrated by Jansen in her reports “Fleeing Homophobia” (2011) and “Pride or Shame?” (2019), the harmful and stereotypical assumptions that create expectations for the IND to assess applicants are the following. First, the most common general stereotypes assume that:
1. queer asylum seekers have a good knowledge of the LGBT+ organisations existing in the Netherlands and their countries of origin. Therefore, this belief assumes that they must be necessarily active members or at least visitors of these organisations, activists or at least people who are in the position and have the will, awareness and possibility of making a political stance out of their identity;
2. queer people have necessarily a deep and structured emotional sphere; the act of coming out is similar everywhere, independently from the geopolitical context where it happens. This assumption is naïveté at best, a high underestimation of the clear danger queer people face at worst;
3. “people never take risks” (Jansen, 2019: 168), like just the fact of being a queer person in the Global South did not represent a risk by itself;
4. having sexual intercourse implies people having a clear and fixed idea of their sexual orientation and being able to discuss it with clarity and competence;
5. gay men and boys will inevitably be sexually active if they have the opportunity; this belief recalls a very common sexist assumption according to which men must always be willing and ready for sexual intercourse;
6. Queer asylum seekers cannot be religious.
Moreover, there are additional stereotypical assumptions about LGBT+ asylum seekers included in the policy itself, that represent expectations, and therefore implicit guidelines to verify the credibility of asylum applications based on sexual orientation or gender identity. First, the assumption that “LGBTI asylum seekers have always gone through a process of awareness and a process of self-acceptance.” (Jansen, 2019: 168) is very common. Furthermore, queer asylum seekers are believed to “have struggled with feelings of shame, guilt and insecurity before they could accept themselves” (Jansen, 2019: 169).
The assumptions on which the policy is designed take for granted that queer people from the Global South must have gone through a process of self-reflection and deep awareness of their own sexual orientation and gender identity, leading to an enlightened final stage of hard-earned self-acceptance. Since they do not conform to the heteronormative standard, they are supposed, according to this stereotypical view, to take extremely seriously their (artificially created) differences. They are expected to give the impression of being contrite, almost remorseful, but dramatically self-aware. According to Jansen (2019), it is very common for queer asylum seekers to experience feelings of relief or happiness when they find out that their sexual orientation and/or gender identity are actually existing and codified identities that other people in the world experience. In these cases, queer asylum seekers are not believed, because this image does not match the assumption of self-blame, guilt, embarrassment, and shame that the heteronormative mindset requires from people that do not respect the standard. As reported by Jansen: “In many of the examined files, the person concerned [the LGBT+ applicant] says they have not struggled with the sexual orientation and did not have any problems with self-acceptance. Sometimes, there is a sense of relief when it becomes clear to them what is going on. The problems lie rather with the others, with their environment. Unlike what is suggested in the policy text, most asylum seekers are perfectly able to make the distinction between themselves and their environment.” (2019: 169).
The processes of self-acceptance and awareness are treated, in the context of the policy, as existing and proven phenomena, but that is not the case. As reported by Jansen, “It appears from the examined files, however, that these concepts are not in line with the experiences many asylum seekers have, and so they do not recognise themselves in these.” (2019: 169).
Finally, another stereotype contained in the policy is represented by the assumption that the more LGBTI-hostile the environment/origin country of the asylum seeker, the more preparedness they will have with their processes of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Assuming queer asylum seekers to be competent, ready enough or even willing to speak about their sexuality or gender identity in a free, conscious, and uninhibited way, or to be willing or prepared to give graphic details about sexual intercourse, is unrealistic, essentialising, and deeply harmful to the applicants. Such an expectation is deeply problematic since it doesn’t consider education, cultural background, possible inhibition or confidentiality, and past traumas of queer asylum seekers. This stereotypical notion is, as remarked by Jansen (2019), counterintuitive and contradictory since a very LGBTI-hostile environment will with every probability discourage (queer) people from openly discussing their sexuality or gender identity, let alone having a Western-coded vocabulary to identify themselves. The report highlights that assuming and expecting queer asylum seekers necessarily to have internal struggles, shame, self-hate, and guilt, is unacceptable and scientifically groundless. It is also a harmful and stereotypical belief that identifies queer asylum seekers as helpless victims, reinforcing the myth of the white saviours.
The pressure to fit in the strict lines of what a queer African or Asian person should look like, feel, or behave, for a commission of white, Western, maybe even heterosexual, and cis-gender, people, is what determines the outcome of the application of LGBT+ asylum seekers. The fact that these stereotypical assumptions are unrealistic and untrue makes credibility the most important factor in asylum applications, even more than the truth. The most advantageous element to succeed in such interviews is having a high educational level and having access to Western culture enough to have an idea of what is expected of a Western-coded queer person, and to perform it. This fact has created a certain diffidence in the IND officers, who, to avoid any risk of what would be perceived as simulation, try to be as eager as possible in verifying (their own concept of) authenticity and credibility in applicants. This diffidence creates a vicious circle that is making it increasingly difficult to be believed and recognised for queer asylum seekers with a low educational level, a cultural background that makes them especially inhibited or reserved in talking about sexual matters, or who simply are not willing to be graphic or explicit during the interview.
The differentiation that is pursued when trying to have queer asylum seekers prove, validate and code their identities to be acceptable by a European country is functional to a system of heteronormativity that is deeply integrated with the post-colonial values on which the European Union is built. Identities are not fixed and unchangeable elements. Identities are produced, forged, and positioned on a very precise scale, regulated by factors such as race, class, gender, and heteronormativity. Building a precise idea of “Western queer identity”, characterised by stereotypical elements that are well-known and somehow tolerated by the heteronormative society, means creating a conceptualisation of being queer sustained by a narrative of authenticity: being vulnerable enough, enough in need, queer enough, but queer in an acceptable way.
In Jansen’s report’s (2019) general conclusion, together with other valuable recommendations, she illustrates what should be the most crucial aspect of this kind of assessment. She stresses how the only way someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation should be assessed is by self-identification, since the personal and intangible nature of such matter.
In conclusion, we should always keep in mind that identities are not fixed, objectively verifiable, or the same everywhere. Our identities are, mostly, socially constructed, they are social conventions, fiction. Our own conceptualisation of what queer people, possibly even ourselves, should look, or feel, or how they (we) should behave, is to a great extent influenced by stereotypical assumptions made in the context of the heteronormative regime in which we live. Moreover, these conceptualisations were born in the Western world, so they are designed to shape and be applied (even if they shouldn’t) to a Western population. Expecting that being queer in the Global South is identical in manifestations, thoughts and feelings to being queer in Western societies is naive at best, extremely harmful at worst.
One of the first steps to contribute to changing policies such as the WBV 2014/22, but also many others, is to collectively understand that people’s identities shouldn’t be coded, assessed, questioned or verified, but only lived authentically (with our own authenticity), and accepted. Deconstructing our own (biased and, at a certain extent, fictional) concepts of how queer people should be, feel or think is crucial to give the right space to exist and find its own expression to black, BIPOC, middle-Eastern, African, Asian, and any other form of queerness.
References and insights
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Akin, D. (2019). Discursive construction of genuine LGBT refugees.
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Chossière, F. (2021). Refugeeness, Sexuality, and Gender: Spatialized Lived Experiences of Intersectionality by Queer Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Paris. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3.
Ghidelli, G. (2023) Trajectories, insecurities, and liminality in the post-Dublin Europe. A case study between Amsterdam and Bologna, Master’s thesis, Radboud University, Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen, https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/handle/123456789/14947
Jansen, S. (2011), Fleeing Homophobia, Asylum Claims Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Europe, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU University Amsterdam), September 2011
Jansen, S. (2019). Pride or shame? Assessing LGBTI asylum applications in the Netherlands following the XYZ and ABC judgments. Amsterdam: COC Netherlands. Available at: https://www. coc. nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Pride-or-Shame-LGBTI-asylum-in-the-Netherlands. Pdf
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