A new materialist exploration of Sexual and Gender Minorities asylum seekers and refugees’ experiences of the UK’s asylum process
type: CreativeWork
description: This research is a new materialist exploration of sexual and gender minority asylum seekers and refugees lived and embodied experiences of the UK’s refugee status determination process. It explores specifically experiences of sexual minorities who were forced to flee their homeland to the UK where they later sought sanctuary on grounds of Sexual Orientation and/ or Gender Identity (SOGI), as per UNHCR guidelines on International Protection no.9, because their countries outlawed consensual same-sex activities. This study captures participants’ pre-flight and post-flight personal stories. Twenty asylum seekers and refugees from nine countries were interviewed for this study using semi-structured interviews. Data were also collected through photovoice, whereby participants provided self-generated images, ephemerally capturing their experiences. These images were analysed alongside interview data, using materialist analysis to generate the most significant intensities (“themes”). A significant number of the 20 research participants fled from former British colonies, where Britain introduced criminalisation of consensual same-sex activities starting in India from 1800s. I draw on and extend the new materialist notion of assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) as an overarching theory in conjunction with a conceptual assemblage of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2013), slow death (Berlant, 2007) and slow violence (Nixon, 2011) as lenses to explore participants’ asylum migratory experiences. Assemblage theory acknowledges that multiple bodies- both animate and inanimate interact and merge at specific points to assemble the most salient affects. Affects are what is produced from relational encounters with diverse bodies. From participants’ interviews and photovoice, the most significant salient affects produced in the process, were identified. My subjectivity was acknowledged, and how it affected the study because I am part of the research-assemblage. Through materialist analysis so…
abstract: This research is a new materialist exploration of sexual and gender minority asylum seekers and refugees lived and embodied experiences of the UK’s refugee status determination process. It explores specifically experiences of sexual minorities who were forced to flee their homeland to the UK where they later sought sanctuary on grounds of Sexual Orientation and/ or Gender Identity (SOGI), as per UNHCR guidelines on International Protection no.9, because their countries outlawed consensual same-sex activities. This study captures participants’ pre-flight and post-flight personal stories. Twenty asylum seekers and refugees from nine countries were interviewed for this study using semi-structured interviews. Data were also collected through photovoice, whereby participants provided self-generated images, ephemerally capturing their experiences. These images were analysed alongside interview data, using materialist analysis to generate the most significant intensities (“themes”). A significant number of the 20 research participants fled from former British colonies, where Britain introduced criminalisation of consensual same-sex activities starting in India from 1800s. I draw on and extend the new materialist notion of assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) as an overarching theory in conjunction with a conceptual assemblage of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2013), slow death (Berlant, 2007) and slow violence (Nixon, 2011) as lenses to explore participants’ asylum migratory experiences. Assemblage theory acknowledges that multiple bodies- both animate and inanimate interact and merge at specific points to assemble the most salient affects. Affects are what is produced from relational encounters with diverse bodies. From participants’ interviews and photovoice, the most significant salient affects produced in the process, were identified. My subjectivity was acknowledged, and how it affected the study because I am part of the research-assemblage. Through materialist analysis so…
author: Bagonza, Paschal Gumadwong
license: https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/8a0c09e8-17d6-4b5e-b269-520cd7484bd6/download
date published: 2023-09
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:18:42Z
provider: De Montfort University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: De Montfort University