Homonationalist pressures: A critical examination of the priorities and self-identification processes of transgender migrants from the Middle East...

Full title: Homonationalist pressures: A critical examination of the priorities and self-identification processes of transgender migrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) navigating Western European asylum and migration practices and discourses.
Overview:
Estimates suggest tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ migrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have resettled in Europe, with research highlighting experiences of racism and xenophobia in European nations. However, these studies - focused on gay men - fail to represent racialised transgender migrants who constitute the most socio-economically excluded subsection of Europe's LGBTQ and migrant communities. At the intersection of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and transphobia, transgender migrants from MENA face particular - and largely ignored - challenges when navigating asylum processes and discourses in Western European countries. Thus, this research asks:

- What are the needs and priorities of transgender migrants from MENA living in Western Europe?
- How are these addressed through Western European media discourses, as well as state, government and NGO policies and practices?
- How do tensions around gender identity within these practices and discourses inform the self-identification of transgender migrants from MENA?
Context:
Scholars argue that racialised queer migrants face intersecting homophobia, racism, and xenophobia in Western host countries and must assimilate to Western gender and sexual norms to receive asylum and social acceptance. As asylum processes necessitate evidence of persecution, racialised queer migrants are compelled to demonise their home countries. Thus, these migrants are said to be exploited to obscure Western histories of anti-LGBTQ discrimination; to uphold restrictive Western models of queerness; and to legitimate Islamophobia and racism, within a discourse Puar (2005) terms 'homonationalism'. However, homonationalism has not been sufficiently investigated among racialised transgender migrants, a gap this project addresses.
I will analyse how homonationalist tensions around gender identity within Western Europe inform transgender migrants' self-identification, such as influencing gender transition, choice of name, clothing, etc. This research would explore how transgender migrants may feel compelled to transition towards white, Western, and Eurocentric gender ideals. My research challenges current understandings of Western queer liberation, acknowledging that the racialised politics of gender and queerness within Fortress Europe "operate on actual bodies, capable of producing [...] life and death" (Stryker, 2013).