Is queer-and-trans youth homelessness a form of displacement? A queer epistemological review of refugee studies’ theoretical borders

Abstract

The phenomenon of queer-and-trans internal migration from homophobic to “safe” areas in the United States remains under-studied in the literature of refugee and forced migration studies. Rejected from their communities and facing discrimination, queer-and-trans youth leave home and may not find another–can their experience of homelessness be considered forced migration? In this paper, I employ critical and normative theory to explore the logics that produce cisheteronormative assumptions in refugee studies. I posit that there is an epistemological cisheteronormativity informing the theory of knowledge of the discipline and causing the internal migration of queer-and-trans people in the United States to be overlooked. I use the case study of queer-and-trans youth experiencing homelessness to reveal how epistemological cisheteronormativity prevents us from asking crucial questions about queer-and-trans migrants that would not only render their displacement legible, but also challenge the prevailing, depoliticizing assumptions associated with the liberal queer-and-trans subject.