In Bed With the State? Queer and Trans Migrations Through Marriage

Abstract

This review examines a quarter century of scholarship on LGBTQ marriage and partner migration. The question in the title of the article is one that comes up in different ways in this literature: the intrusion of the immigration state into couple and family relationships, and the extent to which queer and trans people are forced to be “in bed” or complicit with state normativities. Research highlights the enduring importance of national origin, race, and class for LGBTQ marriage migrants. Transgender and especially bisexual perspectives are underexamined even as these groups navigate some of the starkest challenges. Frameworks of heteronormativity, homonormativity, and homonationalism are used and at times complicated by scholars. This rapidly growing field offers new insights into the regulatory entanglements of state power and intimate life that will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, activists, and policymakers who work on migration and LGBTQ families.