Paper short abstract:

The research deals with the everyday life of post-migrant individuals having same-sex intimacies and their relationships with homonormative spaces in northern Italy.

Paper long abstract:

The Italian political agenda shows a conservative climate both toward same-sex marriage and ethnic minorities' rights, whereas in the framework of mainstreaming LGBTIQ activism little attention is given to the intersections between racial and gender-based discriminations.

The proposed research explores everyday situations lived by post-migrant people having same-sex desires and intimacies. The fieldwork is carried out in northern Italy through in-depht interviews and focuses mainly on people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, Maghreb and the Middle East.

The research looks at different trajectories of migrants who self-identify as LGBTIQ individuals and those who reject these labels. The majority of interviewees declare to flee from perceived homo/transphobic countries, but as newcomers in Italy they constantly tackle against xenophobia, racism and homonormativity. Consequently, they are rarely committed to the so-called "promotion of LGBTIQ rights" or simply participate to LGBTIQ events. On the other hand, the fieldwork shows also the risks of marginalisation and stigmatisation experienced by some of them within their "ethnic" social networks for reasons linked to their sexual behaviours.

An anthropological approach underlines the importance to challenge our own representational categories on gender and sexuality (i.e. a person who engages same-sex acts does not consider necessarily a LGBTIQ person). It can also help LGBTIQ activists to analyse the "whiteness" of LGBTIQ policies and sheds light about misrepresentation, exclusion and oppression processes undergone by non-heterosexual individuals with a migration background.