Paper short abstract:

This paper explores pathways to wellbeing for ethnic minority LGBTQ+ young adults despite their experiences of intersecting and compounding structural and inter-personal violences. We will discuss on how our participants cope with, resist, and find queer joy in a challenging world.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years there has been increased interest in the lives and experiences of ethnic minority sexual/gender minority individuals. In particular, the challenges they experience as individuals with multiple minoritized identities. For example, “multiple minority” individuals experience poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes than their heterosexual/cisgender peers and are subject to intersecting and compounding structural and inter-personal violences.

As well as employing ecosocial theory, a common framework to explain poorer wellbeing among sexual minority individuals is minority stress theory. The theory points to experiences of stress brought about by discrimination and internalised homophobia as crucial to understanding poorer health outcomes, while highlighting the potentially ameliorative effects of individual and community level resources and coping strategies.

However, while important work has been conducted on the challenges experienced by sexual/gender minorities (SGMs), including ethnic minority SGMs, narratives of pain, victimisation and trauma dominate. While valuable, presenting lives solely through deficit models has crucial consequences for efforts to close health and social inequities by obscuring the strengths, skills and agency already present.

Responding to the re-framing and re-focusing work of our participants during semi-structured interviews, we focus on how our participants cope with, resist, and find joy in a challenging world. With one eye remaining on the structural violence experienced by this group, we also acknowledge these themes are not uncomplicated goods, but often necessary tools with their own complexities and drawbacks. Nonetheless, we hope to illuminate pathways to wellbeing and joy for a group often framed through pain.