THE WAY OUT

Buxton and Ritholtz discuss issues involving LGBTQ+ asylum in this scholarly work.

When considering the problem of displacement, it’s easy to get caught up in academic debates about legal rights or political institutions while overlooking the actual lived experience of displaced people. In this work, political philosopher Buxton and scholar of theoretical and empirical politics Ritholtz argue that the political theory of refuge must contend with conditions as they exist on the front lines of displacement. “By centering the experiences of the queer and trans displaced,” the authors write in their introduction, “we can illuminate the complexities and contradictions of seeking sanctuary in a persistently exclusionary global refugee regime.” The authors analyze, through an intersectional lens, the myriad forces that drive queer and trans displacement, often following the displaced over borders and into new lands. Readers meet Victor, a gay man from Nigeria who fled to the United Kingdom following attempts by his community to change his sexual orientation via starvation and exorcism; Judis, a trans woman from Ukraine who was unable to flee the country with other women during the Russian invasion due to border guards’ insistence that she was a man; and Victoria, an undocumented immigrant trans woman raised in the United States who was sent to a men’s detention facility and fatally denied her HIV medication. The authors propose new ways to approach the discussion in the hope of creating better outcomes for people ensnared in various patterns of persecution. Buxton and Ritholtz write for an academic audience, and their prose reflects their immersion in the language of theory. Even so, a sincere appreciation for the experiences of their subjects shines through the text. “Though we have not experienced anything close to what those in the stories that line our pages have,” they write, “we recognize the wisdom in their words and the theory in their actions.” Serious readers will appreciate this wide-ranging work.

A trenchant analysis of the forces surrounding queer displacement.