LGBTIQ Recognition in Asylum Policies: Vulnerability as a Disabling Entitlement

The structuring of asylum policies around an abstract and universal figure of the refugee, excluding those who do not conform to this idealized representation, is a classic of feminist scholarship on migration. Yet, over the past two decades, the exact opposite seems to have occurred in asylum policies across Europe. Targeted policies have mushroomed, as have clauses recognizing the “special needs” of some subgroups under general asylum frameworks. This shift is at the heart of this chapter, which examines the evolving intersection between othering and recognition in the context of asylum. Focusing on the growing recognition of LGBTIQ rights under EU asylum law in the backdrop of closing European borders, it questions the extent to which discourses of recognition can feed dynamics of othering. This is both because they reinforce the assignation of their subjects to a magnified figure of alterity that disables them as full subjects, and because they cast a veil of progress over the untouched logics of material deprivation, thus modernizing instead of disrupting them. This argument has been developed based on a yearlong qualitative fieldwork (2019–2020), which includes interviews with 72 stakeholders, observation, documentary analysis, and a survey.