Introduction to special issue: queer liberalisms and marginal mobilities

Abstract

The aim of this special issue is to unpack the tenuous relationship between queer liberalisms and marginal mobilities within contested political contexts in the Global South and North. Establishing the special issue’s thematic and theoretical framework, it firstly, theorizes “queer liberalism” as a mode of governance and a critique and contextualizes the term within a genealogy of queer politics. Secondly, it discusses “marginal mobilities” as an analytical framework that expands the purview of how the (im)mobilities of LGBTIQ+ people are co-constituted by queer liberal governance and approached within scholarly, activist, and political debates. This Introduction further charts this special issues’ interdisciplinary contributions which address three overarching themes: (a) the paradox of queer neoliberal policies and politics in the LGBTIQ+ asylum context; (b) the in- and exclusions of non-heteronormative subjects and/within the nation-state; (c) the in- and exclusions of LGBTIQ+ refugees within societal spaces in the asylum country.