Forced Migration and Evolving Responses to Queer Identity in the Muslim Family

Abstract

Scholarship on asylum seekers after they arrive in Europe often overlooks their families still at home. This chapter presents the case study of a transgender Muslim who has been awaiting asylum in Greece since 2018 and interrogates how his family experienced his persecution and flight from Pakistan. The data builds on international fieldwork with more than 20 queer asylum seekers in Pakistan and Europe to examine the question of how LGBTQIA+ refugees and their families navigate their vulnerabilities, everyday (in)securities and consequent strategic responses. The study employs the critical theory of transnational intersectionality to analyse multiple identities and fluid social connections across time and place. On the basis of six in-depth interviews, we explore the insecurities experienced by the asylum seeker’s family while the young man was in Pakistan and describe the family’s three shared stages of strategic responses: hiding, asserting religiosity and, finally, migration. The chapter also draws on official asylum applications, NGO reports, first-person written narratives and audio recordings collected over 6 months to illustrate how the youth’s life and departure balanced his individual needs for gender expression with the family’s collective need for relational well-being, everyday security and acceptance by their Islamic community.