Full Description
Bringing together diverse case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, this open access collection serves as the first in-depth examination of queer and trans displacement in East Africa. The collection features original creative works by queer and trans diasporic writers and artists with first-hand experiences of displacement.
The last decade has seen a sharp rise in state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in East Africa.
This includes discriminatory legislation, such as the widely condemned Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda, and government-initiated crackdowns, such as the 'anti-gay taskforce' launched in Tanzania in 2018. The politicisation of sexual and gender rights in the region is often presented as a moral crusade (i.e. a return to traditional/family values) and is enacted with the support of many religious and cultural leaders. It is within this context that an ever-increasing number of LGBTQI+ people are leaving their homes and seeking protection elsewhere.
But East Africa cannot be reduced to a site from which LGBTQI+ displacement emanates. Several countries in the region act as either host countries or transit points, even as they produce LGBTQI+ refugees of their own. These complex social, political and legal dynamics make East Africa a productive site for theorising queer and trans displacement. The region offers insights into how, when and why LGBTQI+ Africans move, the social obstacles they face, and the different survival strategies they deploy. Despite this, research on East African queer and trans displacements remains sparse.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.
Contents
Introduction
John Marnell, B Camminga, Barbara Bompani & Kamau Wairuri 'East African Queer and Trans Displacements: Local Tensions, Regional Challenges and Global Implications'
New directions: Theories, methods and practices
Poem - Sam Adam, 'Estrangement (Ghorba)' (edited by Maneo Mohale)
1.Sam Adam, 'Converging Trails: Navigating queerness, Homeland and a Beyond-Binaries Explorations'
2.Stella Nyanzi, 'Deception and Evidence for Queer Exodus from Uganda: Reflexive Autoethnography'
3.B Camminga, 'Parallel Legal Regimes: Homotransnationalism, LGBTQI+ Refugees and a Failing International Protection System'
4.Miriam Gleckman-Krut, 'On Disembodied Details and the Lives they Imply: Archiving Queer Displacement in an African context'
Protection gaps: Violence, precarity and abandonment
Poem - Mihret Kebede, 'An Intimate Exile'
5.Gabriel du Plessix, 'Life in Limbo: Queer and Trans Encampment in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp'
6.Neil J. W. Crawford, Katie McQuaid & Nath Niyitegeka, 'Climate and Environmental Injustices in Kampala, Uganda: Lived experiences of LGBTQI+ Refugees'
7.B Camminga, John Marnell & Emmy Manou, 'The Externalisation of Borders and Barbarism: Rwanda and the Return of the LGBT Question'
8.Kamau Wairuri & Mwangi Mwaura, '"It's not a Safe Haven or La La Land!" Queer refugees survival of State Policing in Nairobi'
3. Everyday life: Navigating social and spatial borders
Poem- Diriye Osman, 'I Bleed Black'
9.Barbara Bompani, 'From Sinner to "Un-Sinned": Faith and Religious Experiences in the Everyday Life of LGBTQ+ Displaced People in Nairobi'
10.John Marnell, ' "I Sucked a lot of Dicks to Get this Place!" Home-making and Care Practices among East African LGBTQ Refugees'
11.Megan Douglas, ''This Is How I Am': Fashion, Agency and (In)visibility among Gay and Trans Ugandan Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Nairobi'
Epilogue
John Marnell & B Camminga 'Displacements in an Uncertain Future'
