Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the case study of the British queer activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants to explore how political solidarity is being intentionally fostered across identity formations and political constituencies based on shared histories and experiences of structural violence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore how political solidarities form across identities, or the formation of "solidarity despite differences (Mecheril 2014), through examining the case of Lesbian and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSMigrants) in the United Kingdom. This paper is concerned with how LGSMigrants fosters solidarity between local and national queer communities and migrant and refugee communities in the United Kingdom, arguing that the possibility of solidarity despite difference exists in LGSMigrants' cross-identity agenda setting. LGSMigrants organizes around ending the forced removal of migrants from the United Kingdom by the Home Office and has specifically targeted their activist work around ending the contracting of commercial airlines like British Airways for deportation flights.

LGSMigrants' organizing is mindful of the existing political cleavages that have been raised between queer and migrant communities in the United Kingdom and actively seeks to unsettle and contradict media narratives which place queer people and the protection of queer rights in direct opposition to racialized migrants. This paper seeks to explore how political solidarity is being fostered across identity formations, arguing that in this particular case, solidarity in rooted in shared histories and experiences of structural violence in the form of government oppression, demonization in the British media, and shared histories of criminalization.