Homemaking and perpetual liminality among queer refugees

Abstract

As people continue to flee repressive regimes, discussions of refugees’ state of liminality have intensified. Refugee camps and detention centres tend to force refugees to endure living in liminality for long periods of time. Taking fleeing as a point of departure, this study suggests a change from the notion of fleeing as movement to a search for home and homemaking. This understanding shifts the analysis away from state-controlled spaces to a wider consideration of spaces of importance for homemaking. Widening the discussion on liminality to homemaking indicates that liminality can be experienced in a variety of spaces. Using material from interviews with queer refugees in the Swedish countryside, I discuss their travels, displacements and homemaking. Their stories show that creating a home is a continuous process delimited by norms in families, ethnic networks, host societies and queer networks. Not adhering to these norms renders homemaking difficult and pushes some queer refugees to liminal spaces. Thus, I suggest an understanding of some queer refugees as constantly rejected and pushed into a perpetual state of liminal homemaking. An analysis that illuminates refugees’ displacements from belonging moves discussions of liminality away from state-controlled spaces and highlights the norms that govern the homemaking process.

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