Book SynopsisWinner, ASR Best Africa-Focused Edited Collection by the African Studies Review Recent years have seen increased scholarly and media interest in the cross-border movements of LGBT persons, particularly those seeking protection in the Global North . While this has helped focus attention on the plight of individuals fleeing homophobic or transphobic persecution, it has also reinvigorated racist tropes about the Global South.In the case of Africa, the expansion of anti-LGBT laws and the prevalence of hetero-patriarchal discourses are regularly cited as evidence of an inescapable savagery. The figure of the LGBT refugee often portrayed as helplessly awaiting rescue reinforces colonial notions about the continent and its peoples. Queer and Trans African Mobilities draws on diverse case studies from the length and breadth of Africa, offering the first in-depth investigation of LGBT migration on and from the continent. The collection provides new insights into the drivers and impactTrade Review[A] sensitive, textured, and comprehensive investigation of queer and trans migration … a vibrant and valuable addition to the scholarly literature surrounding queer and trans migration. It is an exceptional volume, with an impressive array of contributors, that makes for a dynamic, refreshing, and in-depth investigation of queer and trans migration on and from the African continent. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *This urgent, compelling, and carefully curated volume is a vital corrective to the field of queer and trans migration studies. By decentering an emphasis on legal regimes, Euro-American perspectives, and South-North migration trajectories, Queer and Trans African Mobilities fills gaps in knowledge and understanding that have existed for decades. As a whole, the essays in this book invite readers to expand their thinking on migration narratives, securitization regimes, belonging, and what it means to think about queer Africa. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone who teaching about queer and trans migration, gender and sexuality on the African continent, and the necessity of geographically-specific analyses of transnational mobilities. * Karma R. Chávez, Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, USA *Queer and Trans African Mobilities crucially intervenes in queer migration studies and politics by fully accounting for the journeys of queer and transgender Africans on the African continent, to different continents and countries, and on digital platforms. By centering queer and trans Africans’ experiences with migration, mobility, and travel, this timely book demonstrates how migration studies and queer African studies can enrich one another. * Ashley Currier, Professor, University of Cincinnati, USA, author of Politicizing Sex in Contemporary Africa: Homophobia in Malawi (2019) *This gem of a collection thoroughly reorients our understandings of queer and trans migrations, mobilities, and movements within and from the African continent. It reframes how African nations, and queer and trans migrants, are imagined, conceptualized, and engaged. The authors provide innovative methodologies, epistemologies, and key questions for scholarship, activism, and policy-making. Read this groundbreaking book. * Eithne Luibhéid, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Arizona *Queer and Trans African Mobilities is bold and transformative in its challenging of our understanding of the intersections of gender, sexuality and mobility in Africa. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the book is a worthwhile provocation and powerful reminder of how queer and trans mobilities in the continent are and should be imagined and theorized. The essays in this book push back against rigid interpretations of Africa and its peoples and the monolithic view that queer and trans Africans only move to the Global North to find more accommodating spaces. The book makes important contributions to the conceptions of border regimes as well as local, regional and global responses to queer and trans mobilities. Queer and Trans African Mobilities is a tour de force and a timely contribution to queer migration studies and queer African studies. * Gibson Ncube, Stellenbosch University, Co-Convenor of Queer African Studies Association *Queer and Trans African Mobilities is an exciting and relevant collection of essays exploring the limits and possibilities of migration, asylum, and diaspora. The various essays exfoliate the layers of cultural, emotional, and political issues that confront these minoritized subjects who cross various virtual and geographic borders in their attempt to find home, solace, and safety amidst the tribulations of the contemporary world. Among its various valuable interventions is the complicating of the directionality of migration which is typically portrayed as movements from South to North. By offering studies on South-South mobilities, this work enables a new cartography and an expansive way of understanding the travails and travel of African queer and trans subjects. * Martin F. Manalansan IV, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA *Camminga and Marnell have produced a rare edited volumes whose value far exceeds the sum of its parts. Not only does It offer original insights into the lives of people often hidden in plain view, but bravely charts a research agenda at once provocative and respectful; poignant and political. It unsettles migration studies’ geographic and conceptual center. But more than that, it does the same for queer, trans, and gender studies. It introduces authors many will not yet know, sites that rarely feature in dominant accounts, and lifecourses that only a few will imagine possible. It sets the bar for collaborative, generative research that broadens and deepens through contributions to both scholarship and social justice. * Loren Landau, Professor of Migration and Development, University of Oxford, UK *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1.ATTRIBUTION ORDER? – Framing African Queer and Trans Mobilities: Absences, Presences and Challenges Complicating Migration Narratives 2.Yara Ahmed – Labyrinthine Wanderings: Queering Mobility in Impossible Geographies 3.John Marnell – Telling a Different Story: On the Politics of Representing African LGBTQ Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers 4.Caio Simões de Araújo – Along the Pink Corridor: Histories of Queer Mobility Between Maputo and Johannesburg (Ca. 1900–2020) Barriers to Protection: Ethical, Procedural and Legal Challenges 5.Agathe Menetrier – An Ethical Dilemma: When Research becomes ‘Expert Testimony’ 6.Marien Gouyon – ‘Sheep in a Pen’: How the Externalisation of EU Borders Impacts the Lives of Gay Refugees in Morocco 7.Charlotte Walker-Said – Homophobia as Public Violence: Politics, Religion, Identity and Rights in the Lives of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Asylum Seekers from Cameroon The Digital and the Transnational 8.Godfried Asante – ‘Where is Home?’ Negotiating Comm(unity) and Un/Belonging Among Queer African Migrants on Facebook 9.B Camminga – What is Private about ‘Private Parts’? On Navigating the Violence of the Digital African Trans Refugee Archive 10.Gonca Sahin – Ties that Matter: Queer Ways of Surviving a Transit Country Bordering in Action: Identity, Belonging and Wellbeing 11.Emanuel Munyarukumbuzi, Margaret Jjuuko and James Maingi Gathatwa – ‘Kindness is a Distant and Elusive Reality’: Charting the Impacts of Discrimination on the Mental and Sexual Wellbeing of LGBT Refugee Youth in Kenya 12.Verena Hucke – Differential Movements: Lesbian Migrant Women’s Encounters with, and Negotiations of, South Africa’s Border Regime 13.Florent Chossière – Debunking the Liberation Narrative: Rethinking Queer Migration and Asylum to France
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