The Construction of Precarity in Refugee and Migrant Discourse” R

Borders in Globalization Review Volume 1, Issue 1 (Fall 2019): 83-90 https://doi.org/10.18357/bigr11201919265 Making Precarious: _R The Construction of Precarity in ARTICLE Refugee and Migrant Discourse Edwin Hodge * In popular media, and sometimes even in academia, people in movement across borders are described as “precarious”; their lives are precarious, their journeys are precarious, their existence is one of precarity. Yet, precarity is not—and never has been—an emergent property of people or their actions. Precarity is a function of the state. It is the state which defines precarity through policy, action (and inaction), and which inscribes that precarity onto those bodies it wishes to regulate. By attaching the label of precarity to migrants and refugees, rather than by describing the actions of states as “making precarious,” discourse obfus- cates the disciplinary and normative powers of the state, both at its borders and throughout its area of control. By examining the experiences of non-binary, queer, and trans migrants at Canadian points of entry, and through a critical examination of the literature surrounding the concept of precarity, this paper argues that state interactions with vulnerable people in motion across borders constitute a claims-making process by which bodies are a) made precarious, and b) made into objects for moral regulation and discipline. Bodies in motion across borders are an empirical reality, but their precarity is constructed, reified by the state, and their existence subject to a normative discourse which paints them as threats to be regulated or repelled, or objects of humanitarian concern. Introduction In early 2019, the Associated Press and other news on what state officials called “deviant” behaviours organizations began to issue reports alleging that a (PBS 2019). In response, gay rights activists and orga- new round of crackdowns targeting LGBTQ citizens nizations began to establish clandestine networks to and activists in Chechnya, a region already infamous smuggle queer,1 non-binary and transgender people for its so-called ‘gay purges’ (PBS 2019). The stories out of the region, and into the international refugee featured grim accounts of people imprisoned on system, where they might find a chance at resettling suspicion of being gay, who were then subjected in a friendlier environment. Groups like the Rainbow to intense interrogation and even torture; two men Railroad in Canada worked to move targeted people were alleged to have died as a result. out of Chechnya and across borders to safety. The decision on the part of the group’s founders to name This was not the first time such purges had taken it after the Underground Railroad was in many ways place in Chechnya. In 2017, LGBTQ activist groups and appropriate as, like the American network used to Amnesty International had reported on similar events, smuggle slaves to freedom, the Rainbow Railroad’s including imprisonment, torture and killings by state intent was to help gender and sexual minorities to representatives as part of a wider social crackdown escape to freedom in Canada. * Edwin Hodge (PhD), Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Canada. Contact: [email protected] https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/bigreview Creative Commons https://biglobalization.org/ CC-BY-NC 4.0 Borders in Globalization Review | Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Fall 2019 Hodge, “Making Precarious: The Construction of Precarity in Refugee and Migrant Discourse” _R The Chechnyan purges of LGBTQ citizens is hardly Data on the exact numbers of SOGIE2 claimants unique; out of 195 recognized nations, only 28 processed by the Canadian Immigration and extend legal protections and rights to non-het- Refugee Board (IRB) each year can be difficult to erosexual citizens. For much of the world, hetero- come by, but what data is available indicates the sexuality is effectively compulsory, with violators numbers of claimants remains small. In 2015, the liable to face fines, prison sentences and, in several number of SOGIE claimants processed was 1,286, states throughout the Middle East and North Africa of which 883 were accepted and 372 were rejected (MENA), death (The Human Dignity Trust 2019). In (Figure 1) (Robertson 2017). While the overall the face of such persecution, a growing number of numbers of trans, queer and non-conforming non-heterosexual people opt to leave their home- refugees crossing into Canada is relatively small, lands in search of safety. Included in this category they nevertheless represent a category of claimant of precarious traveller are transgender, queer, and that is especially susceptible to shifts in refugee non-binary/non-conforming refugees, who are policy, or to shifting political or social attitudes. This among the most vulnerable of all (Affan 2019). is especially true when the basis for their claims for asylum—persecution based on sexual orientation or Yet successful flight from homophobia and transgender identity—demand that they reveal aspects phobia is more difficult than simply fleeing one of themselves they may have spent a lifetime hiding. nation for another; as any number of international organizations will confirm, the journey of the This paper draws on the literature surrounding the refugee is a precarious one—the road of a queer, experiences of queer, non-binary, and transgender non-binary, or transgender refugee more precarious refugees’ experiences at the border to examine the still. Refugees must pass through multiple layers of ways that precarity as a concept and a process is screening and vetting before arriving at a potential socially constructed and grounded in the expres- safe haven, and once they do, there is no guarantee sion of biopower. While these refugees come from that their new home will be any more tolerant than many nations, their experiences with the power the one they left behind. For queer, non-binary and of borders share similar characteristics; of being transgender refugees, the layers of precarity faced unrecognized; of being stereotyped, illegitimated, by virtue of their refugee status are compounded by and challenged to prove their “queer bona fides” additional layers of scrutiny—and, hence, precarity— to border agents and other representatives of as claims agents and border personnel are tasked the various refugee systems of the Global North. with assessing if such claimants are “really queer” Beyond the experiences of queer, non-binary and (Murray 2014). transgender refugees, this paper argues that all refugees are made precarious through their inter- These experiences highlight the ways that precarity actions with individuals, state policy and practice is less of a static categorization of persons, and at the borderline. Further, this paper argues that more of a series of processes—of claims and count- the practice of ascribing the status of precarious to er-claims—involving individuals, states, policy, and the bodies of refugees, rather than locating it in the policy execution which intersect on and within praxis of border enforcement and refugee claims the bodies of queer, non-binary and transgender processing renders the biopower present in state/ refugees. These exchanges illustrate that issues refugee interactions invisible. of precarity—and indeed, of the very concept of precarity—is as much a question of sociology as it The paper will provide a brief overview of some of is any other discipline. Precarity is a process; people the more common ways that precarity is deployed are not precarious, and they do not only experi- in policy and academic debates, before turning to ence precarity, but rather they are made precarious a more focused examination of the use of the term through interactions with others. with regards to refugee experiences. From this Figure 1. IRB Data release: SOGIE and general claim decisions 2011-2015 84 Borders in Globalization Review | Volume 1 | Issue 1 | Fall 2019 Hodge, “Making Precarious: The Construction of Precarity in Refugee and Migrant Discourse” point of departure, this paper will then discuss the other displaced peoples, whose very existence is one sociology and biopower of precarity before moving of uncertainty and risk (Malkki 1996). In this discur- finally to a re-conceptualization of precarity as an sive space, precarity is both a descriptive as well on-going process of claim and counter-claim, where as normative condition of the refugee. Precarity is claims agents’ expectations about the “correct” descriptive when it is employed as part of an analysis way to “be queer” inform their recognition (and, of refugee relationships with the various apparatuses hence, authentication) of queer refugees’ identities that control their movement through states, such as and status. Throughout, this paper draws on testi- when researchers describe the various institutional monials obtained from advocacy groups, in-depth steps vulnerable refugees or migrants must take news reports, government statistics, and academic to navigate the layers of bureaucracy that stand literature from the emerging field of transgender between them and entry to a state (Ilcan, Rygiel and and queer studies. Baban 2018). Precarity is normative however, when it is employed by various stakeholder groups as part of framing strategies designed to tell observers The many (theoretical) faces of precarity what they ought to think about refugee claims. For example, when flows of refugees fleeing political Precarity has long been an object of debate among violence and war in Syria fled across

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