From Borders to Bodies: “Circlusion” and Desires Beyond Credibility in Queer Asylum

Abstract

Borders and boundaries have long served as powerful metaphors in migration and queer studies, yet they risk reproducing heteronormative paradigms that equate (border) penetration with power, and movement with violation. Drawing on interviews from research with queer refugees in Berlin and Copenhagen, this article foregrounds bodies, sexual desires and pleasures, dimensions often marginalized within queer asylum scholarship. Through two empirical vignettes, the analysis mobilizes “circlusion,” a concept developed as a counterpart to penetration, as a conceptual alternative for examining queer migration as an embodied process of opening rather than intrusion. Rather than displacing existing analyses of violence, surveillance, and credibility, the article situates circlusion as an analytical lens that brings desire and pleasure into view within the asylum contexts. Focusing on the lived, sexual experiences of Joshua and Khaled, the article shows how queer refugees can be understood not only as objects of control but also as agents of pleasure, relation, and subversion. By centering desires beyond credibility, this contribution opens space for more nuanced engagements with pleasure, agency, and embodiment in queer asylum research, without reducing queer refugees to either victims or icons of resistance.