Foreign to the world: Challenges faced by LGBT refugees from Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere

Tesfaye and Aisha Allakhverdieva, a volunteer at Quarteera, an organization helping queer refugees, highlight another issue. In many couples fleeing Ukraine (including same-sex couples), one of the partners is a national of a different country, such as Russia or Belarus. As Anna-Maria Tesfaye says, they are often rejected or taken off trains. The April update of the German special order addressing the influx of refugees allows for providing social support and a residence permit to members of Ukrainian families who are third-country nationals if they can prove their family connection with documents, mostly pertaining to economic ties. According to Aisha Allakhverdieva, personal narratives, correspondence, photographs, or letters from friends have no legal force. Even if both partners are Ukrainian nationals, Germany and other countries may place them in different cities because Ukraine does not recognize same-sex marriage and such partners have no documents to prove their union. Anna-Maria Tesfaye also attests to particular challenges faced by -White refugees: even at the Ukrainian border, they need to present more papers and stand in longer lines. They often encounter outrageously racist treatment in Ukraine. She shared stories of a lesbian from India, a gay man from Brazil, and a -binary person from South Africa who failed to get any assistance in Ukraine and slept in the street before Queer Svit took matters into their hands. Kimahli Powell, executive director of Rainbow Railroad, shares similar accounts of the experience of Afghan queer refugees from Ukraine.

Impossible subjects

In any armed conflict or humanitarian crisis, women, queers, and other vulnerable groups are always more exposed. A study in Moldova and post-annexation Ukraine revealed a connection between war and an increase in violence against LGBTQ. There have been reports of Ukrainian territorial defense forces showing aggression toward gender -conforming Ukrainians. The militarization of society and the actualization of masculine ideals marginalize -normative sexuality and genders even further. However, even fleeing the war does not guarantee safety to queers. Multiple researchers interpret the very institute of nationality and national borders as heteronormative. Eithne Luibhéid refers to queer migrants as “impossible subjects” because their histories are “unrepresentable” in a heteronormative civil framework. Furthermore, Jasbir Puar complements heteronormativity with “homonormativity” and “homonationalism” – when proving that you belong to an LGBT group takes conforming with the stereotypical West-centric idea of LGBT people.

Queer migrants often find themselves in transitional gray areas, which is aptly reflected, for example, in a study of queer migration to South Africa and Cape Town from other African regions. There, queers are treated as both “too African” by virtue of their origin and “not African enough” because of their sexuality. Similar processes occur to Iranian queer refugees to Turkey, Venezuelan to Brazil, and most likely, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian to the EU. Countries like Israel and Australia, states like California, and cities like Cape Town practice so-called “pinkwashing”, promoting their queer-friendly image, while in reality they only welcome wealthy White gay men, leaving everyone else behind. Today’s migration and flight are aligned with the needs of a neoliberal regime, in which autonomous subjects are supposed to take care of themselves and contribute to the economy. An investigation into queer migration from the Middle East to Germany with Turkey as a transit point also details this limbo where refugees are kept. One of the respondents, who spent three years in Istanbul, calls the protracted bureaucratic processes a “slow death”.