Drawing on conversations with a queer interlocutor who moved to Austria to escape persecution in their country of origin, I reflect on the limits of legal protection in the host country when and if it is not accompanied by social change. I focus on the tension introduced by anti-black racism that comes in the way of queer solidarity. I ask: what does it mean to be safe, to be granted protection by the law if one’s quality of life is still burdened by racial discrimination?
How do I navigate Austria… which is super white and constructed in a way that does not accept my body…I can literally step outside of this house, or even be in this house and still, I have several issues that do not recognize me as a human being because it is not constructed for a body like mine. And in that understanding, there is also another place where a hurt happens from my people, my home country. I had to be in this space so that I could be safe. At the same time, I speak about the racism that I face [here] as a Black body… And also within the [white] queer community, there is all this heavy fetishization that happens. How do I reconcile what happens to me as a Black queer body? With a consciousness of a person that is challenged by the general [European] public but also challenged by my own community?
These are the words of my interlocutor C quoted from an interview conducted in August 2023. C’s asylum status was granted in Austria after they escaped persecution in their home country due to their sexual and gender identity. As far as their existence in the host country goes, they are protected by the law thanks to, and national laws, regional, and international conventions. The specific kind of threat they used to be faced with by law enforcement bodies, as well as the general public back home is almost nonexistent. This progress notwithstanding, the vignette captures the dilemmas of safety and the limits of legal protection even after one’s legal status is confirmed via the asylum process. As we learn from C’s reflection, they still live a life where they have to self-consciously conduct themselves in a way that does not disturb the comfort of their host’s socio-cultural landscape. C hints at the risk that they can be a victim of hate crimes due to their racial identity, highlighting the problems behind what Waruguru Gaitho calls a single-axis approach the law takes to solving complex and intertwined social issues. According to Gaitho, international human rights laws and others that draw on them tend to downplay the multiplicity of identities in privileging a single marker (such as gender) as the sole category that defines a person.
However, as we gather from the abovementioned example, C’s experience demonstrates that the law is highly limited as an objective instrument if it only focuses on a single category for it fails to account for what it means to exist as a non-white queer asylum seeker in Europe where different forms of discrimination interact to shape the life of the now “safe” immigrant. In this case, what does it mean to be safe, to be granted protection in legal terms if one’s quality of life is still burdened by racial discrimination? How can a Black queer belonging be imagined in a new destination that offers safety from one kind of violence while the racially motivated threat remains unaccounted for? I reflect on these questions hoping to contribute to the discussion about racism in Europe and how Gaitho’s “the single-axis model of the law” might be insufficient in addressing deeply rooted intersectional issues.
While it should be noted that the single-axis approach of the law has been criticised by different scholars and also that some improvements are underway, the social life of non-white queer immigrants in Europe indicates that there is a need for more work beyond what the law can provide. Even though as Richard Mole suggests “European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities”, the socio-cultural context in which non-heterosexual non-cisgender migrants find themselves remains fraught. When it comes to socialization, particularly in nonmetropolitan spaces, race plays a paramount role in shaping one’s sense of being and belonging to a queer community, even if queer people in the host country are welcoming, open, and supportive. This is precisely because, as described by Richard Mole, “the legal asylum process does not operate in isolation from social phenomena and that space, faith, and support groups play important roles in determining the well-being of sexual and gender minorities”. While the law might make the existence of an individual legally possible, the socio-cultural context in which one finds themselves becomes a source of dilemma or it results in marginalization where on the one hand the cultural norms of the host country restrict complete freedom and on the other, the racism within even benevolent queer folks creates the obstacle to the making of a new home guarded against the violence that one runs away from. This means that even if the asylum law for non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people can be assessed as favourably changing over time, other issues such as socio-cultural conditions remain salient in constraining the safety that the minoritized run to. When national boundaries are crossed and the law makes life a little more bearable by giving legal status to queer asylum seekers, the racial boundaries remain to be stark. These boundaries exacerbate the fear and anxiety. They become sources of discrimination and violence to the extent that the likes of C must think about how to conduct themselves when they move within what claims to be a country of freedom. The stories told about European tolerance and its representation as a safe haven for nonwhite queers who escape persecution from their homophobic countries are thrown into sharp relief by these encounters.
Race as an Intractable Problem of the Law
Let us come back to C’s experience to explain race as an intractable problem of the law that a single-axis model overlooks assuming that the law has done its assignment of ensuring safety by granting asylum. When C first arrived in Austria in 2016, they received a lot of support from a Linz (a smaller city in Austria) based queer community to help them settle. While appreciating the hospitality, C and their friend N had to deal with race as a marker of difference and a basis of discrimination; betraying the discourse that constructs the West as a safe haven for queer people. C and N were confronted with an environment that was unavoidably intimate but unfamiliar; racial difference is the underlying factor behind that strange-familiar tension and the icky feeling it entails. C and N encounter themselves as being radically different from their fellow queer hosts. This made it clear that for the nonwhite queers, inclusion is not unconditionally granted based on a shared queerness. The rude awakening to their otherness stares them in the face when race begins to play out in these queer utopic spaces of safety. For C “Linz was like completely white” and they could not see themselves fitting. They found even the queer community as being “absolutely racist; flat out raw racist.” In the end, C decided to move to Vienna, the capital city where they hoped “black, indigenous and queer body [could] exist unapologetically.”
Their move in search of a more inclusive existence through diversity provoked an unexpected reaction from their well-meaning queer hosts in Linz. C was accused of being racist for wanting to move to a more diverse environment. They recount:
“all of the queer people who were supportive when I was in Linz had a problem with it [the move]. I was having a conversation with one queer person who was saying “oh I don’t think you are racist” and you know finding myself to have a conversation with a white person about how I am not racist as a Black person was absurd. That for me is absolutely violent. I was feeling uncomfortable, gaslighted, and silenced but I was not able to understand and put it constructively so that my white queer friend could see the problem in what they were saying.”
While they had a better understanding of what they called “flat-out racist” because it was explicit and visible, C never understood their hosts’ disappointment as a form of racism until later. The weight that burdened C due to these encounters is not necessarily one of outright negation but one of conditional acceptance where they have to remain fixed within gratitude for the love and kindness extended to them. Their decision to move to Vienna rubbed against the satisfaction of their white queer allies for having helped fellow queer persons from Africa. Unreflective queer solidarity that self-presents as a caregiver for the familiar-other (familiar via queerness other via race) is called out for the ways it embodies racism. C’s decision to move destabilizes the selective understanding of queer as existing in a universe of whiteness that mediates sexuality and gender. In trying to make sense of this experience, C situated their exclusion at a home-diaspora continuum saying that their home country has become an unsafe place “where hurt happens from” and Europe “does not recognize me as a human being because it is not constructed for bodies like mine.” C reckons that a shared struggle through gender and sexuality and its attendant solidarity were not enough. There emerges a realization that the promises of queer solidarity are conditional, they depend on how ready one is to forsake the question of race as an important consideration.
C and N are expected to see past race relations, histories, socio-economic conditions, and their own everyday racist encounters. Their Blackness is tolerated as long as it is tamed, makes no one uncomfortable, and makes no outrageous claims and demands. If it is not toned down, Blackness becomes a nuisance that bothers, on the affective level, their white allies. It becomes C’s problem that they failed to assimilate into a white-dominated queer space because they are too sensitive, they tend to see race in everything. C’s insistence on Blackness is considered an inconvenience imposed on, in the words of Lauren Berlant, “white consciousness as it strolls and scrolls through the world expecting not to feel impeded”. Race has to be removed from what constitutes queerness so as to solidify queer as white. After all, why should blackness be sought once one arrives in the colour-blind queer haven of solidarity and alliance? In resisting to adapt to the socially and politically privileged existence within the framework of queer-white-alliance that has opened its door for them, C and N are seen as causing disturbance to the smooth flow of life.
Concluding Remarks
Needless to say, Europe acknowledges the human rights of nonnormative gender and sexual groups and is gradually incorporating its queer subjects into the nation-state. This recognition in turn boosts a homonationalist sentiment, which is even deployed as a parameter to label other non-Western countries as sources of homophobia that require Western intervention in forms such as withholding aid and loans. However, because this is done without seriously addressing the social foundations of certain forms of discrimination, the question of race exposes the loopholes of the progresses Europe made over the years in the legal debate. The contradiction that lies at the heart of European sovereignty is revealed when we pay attention to race. The racial other’s attempt to foreground their identity – to want to live as an unapologetically Black queer person in predominantly white society- becomes an inconvenience to the otherwise celebrated tolerance Europe prides itself on. It continues to see nonwhite queer immigrants as “both necessary for and inconvenient to the general supremacist happiness.” They are needed as evidence to validate the gesture of acceptance but are inconvenient because they demand too much instead of seamlessly integrating into the logic of whiteness. Europe’s anxiety about the danger these racial “others” pose on whiteness is what makes race an intractable problem that needs to be addressed in addition to the commendable legal reforms that have been introduced.
To sum up, C’s encounter offers an intersectional critique of the law, queer theorising, and activism as being trapped by racism despite the claim to be sensitive to various forms of discrimination. Their experience shows that legal protection cannot be taken for granted as an end in itself if the law does not abandon the single-axis model. This is so because the full enjoyment of legal protection from persecution based on gender and sexuality is hampered by racial discrimination. Thus, if the law solely sticks to procedures without dealing effectively with multiple forms of vulnerability that emanate from other categories of difference, then it leaves a lot to be desired. Similarly, while it is necessary to critique the law to account for intersectionality, it is equally crucial to consider other (f)actors. Akin to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, states are required to take “all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations, and to prevent and combat racist doctrines and practices in order to promote understanding between races and to build an international community free from all forms of racial segregation and racial discrimination.” Thus, beyond and in addition to enforcing the law, states and civil society associations are instrumental in tackling the problem of racism and racial discrimination if they exercise due diligence in their various roles and capacities.
