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Paper short abstract

This study explores identity negotiations among LGBTQIA+ refugees in Italy during the post-asylum phase. Based on ongoing fieldwork, it reconstructs alternative narratives to challenge dominant “victimizing” and “liberating” scripts, to capture the complex and dynamic nature of identities.

Paper long abstract

The asylum process often subjects LGBTQIA+ individuals to a pervasive “culture of disbelief”, requiring them to align their life stories with rigid, Westernized categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to be deemed credible. Within the field of Queer Migration Studies, significant attention has been paid to the narratives expected during the asylum claim; however, a crucial question remains insufficiently explored in the literature: what happens once international protection is granted?

This paper explores the identity negotiation processes and narratives deployed by refugees self-identifying as LGBTQIA+ in Italy, during the “post-asylum” phase. It challenges two dominant and oversimplified narratives often reproduced within institutional, humanitarian and academic contexts: the “victimizing script”, which considers refugees merely as passive victims, and the “migration to liberation narrative”, which assumes that obtaining international protection represents necessarily a liberation moment. Such narratives fail to capture the complex, multidimensional and dynamic nature of identities.

The theoretical framework combines Symbolic Interactionism and Intersectionality, while methodologically the study employs Constructivist Grounded Theory, to explore how LGBTQIA+ refugees narrate themselves and strategically negotiate their multiple intersecting identities in everyday social settings and interactions.

This paper presents preliminary findings from ongoing fieldwork for a PhD research project, based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with refugees and professionals. Its aim is to reconstruct alternative narratives for LGBTQIA+ refugees directly from participants’ voices. By following an iterative and reflexive approach, the research moves beyond essentialised categories, offering a deeper understanding of the complexities of LGBTQIA+ refugees in the Italian context.