In pursuit of love: ‘Safe passages’,migration and queer South Asians in the US

Introduction

Much of the public and scholarly discourse on border-crossing, belonging and citizenship, as Luibhéid (2008: 169) has argued, typically assumes that ‘migrants are heterosexual’ and that ‘queers are citizens’ thereby erasing the lives, trials and tribulations of LGBTI migrants. The scholarship on queer migration emerged in response to the aforementioned academic blind spot and proffered two crucial and interrelated insights indicating the reciprocal relationship between migration and sexuality. First, migration impacts sexuality as it results in the restructuration of practices, identities and communities in the host countries that may or may not resemble those of the home country (Carrillo and Fontdevila, 2014; Gopinath, 2005; Manalansan, 2003; Thing, 2010). Second, sexuality also shapes migration as LGBTI immigrants relocate in pursuit of spaces that they imagine will be safer and more liberal (Luibhéid and Cantú, 2005; Manalansan, 2003). Around the same period, i.e. the 1990s, as the scholarship on queer migration was evolving, the human rights framework resurfaced and the human security discourse emerged as important counterpoints to reigning neoliberal paradigms. Human security, explicitly mentioned for the first time in the UN’s Human Development Report of 1994, marked newer and more critical shifts in the discussion of social justice, rights and development. The report emphasized that,

For too long, security has been equated with the threats to a country’s borders. For too long, nations have sought arms to protect their security. For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event. (UNDP, 1994: 3)

While in the past, security was narrowly conceptualized to reflect state-centered interests, the new approach placed people in the center. Freedom from fear (violence and threats), freedom from want (socio-economic deprivations) and freedom to live life with dignity became the barometers of security. It was proclaimed that eradicating individual and community level insecurities would ultimately promote state security.

Yet, despite monumental strides in the direction, insofar as the notion of security raises questions about lives free of threats to survival supported by substantive access to political, civil, social, economic and cultural rights, queer/sexual migrants – documented or undocumented – rarely emerge as critical populations of interest. Observing the lag, Lewis and Naples (2014: 912–913) noted that ‘there has been a surprising lack of engagement with issues of queer asylum and displacement in the field of sexuality studies’ and much of what exists ‘is located primarily within the areas of law and public policy.’ Luibhéid’s (2008) claim, that all migrants are perceived as heterosexual, takes on a distinct meaning and urgency in this context.

In order to discuss the various facets of migrant security, I examine a group that is understudied in the US-based scholarship on migration and sexuality, i.e. South Asian Americans. Based on 30 in-depth interviews supplemented with text and web material produced by and about queer South Asians in the US, I contribute to scholarly discussions regarding queer populations at the intersection of migration and human security in three specific ways. First, the existing scholarship treats safety and endangerment mostly in the context of state actors and policies. Situating in, but going beyond, the areas of law and public policy, this article examines queer migration and security from the lens of the migrants. Safety, security and acceptance are negotiated with multiple agents (such as intimate partners, family, co-ethnic community, etc.) amid statuses (such as class, nationality, religion, gender and age) that facilitate or interrupt migration in ‘glocal’ contexts where the global and local intersect in complex ways to suffuse all such experiences. Second, much of the contemporary work on sexual migration views nation-states as immutable and homogeneous entities. A Western/Eurocentric standpoint essentializes the country of destination (usually located in the Global North) as ‘safe/r’ and the home country (typically in the Global South) as ‘unsafe’ and sexually repressive. But as I demonstrate, this categorization is neither stable nor monolithic, as security is negotiated within, between and across these spaces, all of which powerfully alter experiences of queer immigrants. As Mohanty (2003) notes, the third world exists within inasmuch as it exists outside. Third, as a corollary to the previous point, this article refutes the misplaced assumptions that all queer/sexual migration is necessarily a voluntary, agentic and unilinear movement towards the progressive West. This obscures the reality of communities, transnational lives and consequent forced ‘familial repatriations’ over contested meanings of ‘culture and morality.’ Throughout I show the role of violence, coercion and force that leads to continuing insecurity of queer lives, thereby arguing that while we have successfully humanized the security discourse, we are yet to securitize the human in all its complexity.

Context: (Queer) South Asians and US migration

The US is a nation of immigrants, and like other settler colonies, the dominant group of settlers, European colonizers, have invested considerably in whitewashing the nation through the apparatus of the state, both in explicit (violent displacements and depopulation of indigenous populations) and insidious ways (de facto discriminatory policies that privileged Euro-American whites). Immigration policies, a fundamental apparatus of the state, play an instrumental role in sifting through potential migrants to retain the ‘eligible’ and discard the ‘ineligible’ wherein eligibility is determined through a racist and sexist lens (Luibhéid, 2002; Luibhéid and Cantú, 2005; Shah, 2011). For example, US immigration policies instituted effective bans on sex workers through the Page Law of 1875 yet the law was used disproportionately to target Chinese women (Luibhéid, 2002). As I describe below, queer South Asian experiences are refracted through a similar kaleidoscope of racialized, gendered and sexualized discourses of immigration and citizenship.

Sexuality and the ‘early’ migrants

The presence of South Asians in the US can be traced back to the 1700s, even though they comprised a miniscule share of the US population (e.g. Prashad, 2001). The early voyagers, typically unaccompanied ¹ males, usually came to labor on the agricultural farms and the expanding railroads of the US (a small number of them were students and political activists fleeing British rule). Given the range of laws, many were forced to live in segregated bachelor communities. While it is impossible to know exactly how many of the migrants were queer, there were legal proscriptions against same-sex encounters and, paradoxically, evidence of same-sex and inter-racial intimacy in the archives. As Shah (2011) describes this history, in the wider society the South Asian male migrants, like other racial-ethnic immigrants, were stereotyped as amoral foreigners with unbridled sexual appetites who posed a threat to the moral fabric of white middle class society. A number of legal stipulations were passed to limit their stays, regulate their sexuality and prevent the possibility of inter-racial intimacy. While the professed objective was to protect the innocent white, particularly underage, women from falling prey to these ‘swarthy’ males, there was palpable fear over white males being feminized and emasculated through sexual penetration by the South Asian male (Shah, 2011). The Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 not only barred South Asians from entering the US but also had injunctions against homosexuality couched in the language of ‘constitutional psychopathic inferiority.’ Sodomy, ‘buggery’ and vagrancy were criminalized and fervently implemented to contain the threat of depravity. As Shah (2011) describes, hearsay and mere suspicion were enough to result in police raids and arrests, and elaborate entrapments – in which the police bribed adolescent European males to lure South Asian men – were put in place to set up the migrants. Needless to say, the lives of these early immigrants were anything but secure. In the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, two sexual categories – homosexuality and adultery – were explicitly added to the list of eligibility characteristics and thereby, according to Somerville (2005: 76) ‘lawmakers brought new scrutiny – and the power of the state – to bear on forms of sexuality that seemed to threaten normative monogamous heterosexual marriage.’

The ‘new’ immigrants – from insecure and reviled minority to model minority

Until 1965, the race-based/national-origin quotas and xenophobic ordinances limited migration from South Asia while simultaneously disenfranchising and deporting many of those already in the US. The Immigration Act of 1965 was a turning point, while on the one hand it removed race-based quotas, on the other, it continued to bar ‘sexual deviants’ and prioritized direct family ties. Due to its emphasis on scientific education as means for eligibility, the ‘new’ South Asians that arrived were relatively affluent, highly educated students and professionals. In stark contrast to earlier exclusions of women and children, the new policies extended and emphasized heterosexual family reunification for non-whites. Consequently, unlike the explicit xenophobia of the past, the ‘new’ South Asians were racialized and sexualized through the attribution of the model minority label, which valorized high education, occupational achievement and heterosexuality.

For South Asians, the model minority ideology became central to how they conceptualized their place in the US and coped with racism (for more on this see Adur and Purkayastha, 2013). Within the community and many families, rules for sexual behavior and propriety were rigidly defined and zealously regulated; these boundaries emphasized heterosexual monogamy. Even the later waves of working class South Asian immigrants, who arrived in response to the shortfall in low-skilled labor in the 1990s, ² were invested in upholding the model minority image (for more on this, see Mitra, 2008). What they could not accomplish in terms of wealth they made up for in terms of heterosexist ‘family values.’ Reddy (2005) critiques the state for playing a crucial role in promoting heterosexuality and tacitly supporting ‘homophobia’ in immigrant cultures through its policies. Reddy (2005: 110) writes that through ‘the effective dismantling of welfare benefits of non-citizen racialized workers, workers brought in through family reunification’ were ‘forced to depend on family ties for access to room and board, employment, and other services such as (what amounts to) workplace injury insurance, health care, child care, etc.’ Thus, on the one hand, families and communities ideologically enforced monogamous heterosexuality, on the other, the state’s immigration and welfare policies made hetero-nuclear families indispensable to the migrants’ everyday survival and security.

Changing meanings of sexual morality

Migrants’ security, especially those of minority groups, is directly affected by state and community ideologies and practice. By the 1990s, several streams of ideologies and practices that governed (queer) South Asian lives became apparent. The queer South Asians’ migration to and security in the US are structured within the context of an ethnic community that is invested in promoting (heterosexual) family forms, thinking it is their key to acceptance in the mainstream; the immigration policies that favored hetero-nuclear families; and a mainstream gay and lesbian movement whose dominant objectives largely precluded immigrants of color from the purview of their activism.

Paradoxically, in the 1990s, the US also overturned the restrictions on LGBT migration offering reprieve to LGBT migrants. Queer South Asians, who had already been seeking and clandestinely meeting each other even before the 1990s, were able to organize more visibly without the fear of deportation. Around this time, the US government also shifted its stance on same-sex sexuality as it began to project itself as a beacon for gender and sexual rights to the rest of the world, particularly the non-West; arguably a neocolonial stance that was hardened to justify the many wars of ‘freedom and democracy’ (Massad, 2002; Puar, 2007). The US-based NGOs like the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) launched aggressive universalization campaigns in the same year as the United Nations widened its mandate to center human security, i.e. in 1994 (see Massad, 2002), and the agenda was taken up by the Clinton administration. In 2011, as a Secretary of State of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton (2011) reiterated that, ‘The Obama Administration defends the human rights of LGBT people as part of our comprehensive human rights policy and as a priority of our foreign policy. … The women and men who advocate for human rights for LGBT community in hostile places, some of whom are here with us today are brave and dedicated and deserve all the help that we can give them.’ ³ Consequently, refugee and asylum policies were re-visioned to admit LGBTI identified persons with ‘well-founded fear’ of persecution in their home countries. For migrants, as I show in the following paragraphs, the experiences on the ground varied drastically from these proclamations.

Data and methods

I focus on the US for two specific reasons. First, in addition to being a settler nation, it is also ranked first among nations as a migrant receiving country as well as the top refugee resettlement country. Additionally, time and again through the years, the US has referred to itself as the ‘leader of the free world,’ a front runner in the struggle for human rights and dignity, especially gender and sexual rights.

The article is based on two sources of data: 30 in-depth interviews with South Asian queer migrants to the US supplemented with print and web material produced by queer South Asians in the US. While the majority of the participants in this study trace their origins to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh some trace their origins to the South Asian diaspora in multiple spaces. For example, Debashish traces his parents’ origins to a southern state in India but grew up in Kenya before moving to the US. I use the reference South Asia based on the nomenclature adopted by queer South Asian groups in the US (for a fuller discussion on this issue, see Adur and Purkayastha, 2017). The interviews ranged from one to four hours and have been transcribed verbatim. The interviews were collected between 2009 and 2013 in US cities along the two major coasts such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle and Atlanta. These areas are also known for having a higher concentration of South Asian immigrants. Participants were given the option of using pseudonyms; in many instances the actual places have been altered to further maintain confidentiality. A few other participants chose ‘selective anonymity,’ in other words, they only asked that their real names be concealed when discussing intimate details or when discussing family members. In addition to interviews, I have analyzed the content of print as well as web material – i.e. websites, newsletters, auto-ethnographies, blogs and magazines, especially Trikone – produced by prominent queer South Asians and queer South Asian organizations in the US. Trikone, the magazine, is published several times a year by a prominent queer South Asian organization of the same name located in San Francisco. It has had the distinction of having an international subscriber base and is among the oldest South Asian LGBT publications.

Safe passage (?) for the documented migrants

A significant number of interviewees admitted that sexuality was an important, if not an all-encompassing, reason for relocation to the US, which – based on media reports – they had surmised would be more tolerant to gays and lesbians. Jai, who grew up in a small village in South India, said,

When you grow up in a remote place in South Asia you think you are the only person … when I was growing up, Martina Navratilova’s sexuality was talked about in a Malayalam magazine so I was like hmmm ok so there is a name for it. … At that time Rock Hudson had died of AIDS … so it got a little coverage again so I at least knew I wasn’t the only one [who was gay …].

Ifti Nasim, the co-founder of Sangat (a queer South Asian organization) and an inductee of the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, who grew up in Faisalabad (Pakistan) had actually read a Life magazine article that showed ‘gay people living happily ever after in the US’ and convinced his father to pay for his trip to America (Jespen, 2001). For people like Jai and Ifti Nasim the sensationalized accounts of celebrities like Greg Louganis, Martina Navratilova and George Michael spun an illusion of freedom and security (cases of homophobic violence like the murder of Matthew Shephard, who was allegedly killed for being gay, rarely get the same media exposure). The sanitized image of the US masked many of the contradictions that they encountered after migrating to the US. Little did they anticipate that their paths to naturalization and citizenship could be obstructed by the exclusionary immigration and naturalization policies that categorically favored heterosexual couples, or that the reality of racism in mainstream gay and lesbian spaces would further disenfranchise them. Their realities were compounded by the fact that many did not necessarily find themselves in glitzy metropolitan cities – the quintessential depiction of US in international media – but rather in gritty rural American towns with their fair share of homophobia (this was especially true for those who arrived with student visas to rural university towns). In fact, in 2002, Trikone dedicated an entire issue to discussing queer lives in ‘Smalltown USA.’ In an interview, Ahmar Mustikhan (Sharma, 2002: 9) described that he had left Pakistan hoping that he could live his life ‘without fear or shame.’ He said, ‘the first thing I did after getting out of JFK was to kiss the U.S. soil as part of freedom celebration.’ Such was his exuberance. Soon after, he moved to Piqua, Ohio. There, his experience digressed from the sanguine vision he had cultivated of the US: he endured homophobic slurs, harassment and assaults. In one instance two men baited him in a gay bar, followed him and brutally beat him up, fracturing his jaw so much so that it had to be wired shut for two months. Comparing his experience in rural USA to his life in Pakistan, he said ‘I was gaybashed on a couple of times [in Pakistan], though not as severely that I endured in small-town USA.’ Mustikhan’s pursuit of safety ended in a scarring encounter in small town USA.

The intensifying Islamophobia and xenophobia post-9/11 made violence even more routine for South Asians, whose bodies, homes, places of worship became targets of hate and violence. Gay lives were not safe even in otherwise ‘gay-friendly’ urban settings as violence permeated previously safe spaces such as gay bars and clubs even in the hitherto tolerant cities. Ayaz Ahmed (2002: 11) was at a nightclub dancing when a white male approached him and threatened to send his ‘body back to Osama bin Laden in a body bag’ because he was Muslim! While he hadn’t felt as vulnerable in New York City as Ahmar had felt in Piqua, 9/11 changed it and per Ahmed’s (2002: 11) own admission, ‘for the first time since I have been in the USA I feel Unsafe.’

Fear entered private and intimate spaces for some who felt victimized even by their partners. Sarav recounted his anxieties by saying ‘9/11 happened and believe me or not there was a lot of strain even within the relationship. When people think you are from that part of the world and they think you are (his voice trailing off). … My partner was upset but he did not say anything but I could see it, and it just adds to it (stress).’

Contrary to the safety and security they had imagined, their lives were interrupted by episodic violence that arose not only from homophobic attitudes but also from larger political shifts that enhanced their racialization. Writing about those contradictions, Nasim said, ‘my ethnicity has become a crime. … Mean streets of Chicago have become meaner. … I yearn for the freedom I came here for.’ ⁴ Even as the US began to remake its image as a gay haven to the world outside, gay lives of color – particularly Muslim-looking queer bodies – could claim few of those rights.

Yet, as documented, well-off and highly educated queer immigrants, their migration trajectories are still less insecure and interrupted under ‘merit’ categories ⁵ – i.e. education visa and employment sponsorship – in comparison to undocumented migrants or seasonal workers on an H2B visa. Today, even when sexuality is no longer a basis for exclusion and the Supreme Court ruling of 2013 allows a US citizen or a permanent resident to petition residency for their non-citizen same-sex partner, the system continues to favor the well-off and those who can be expected to form stable families, even if queer ones. In order to successfully petition, the petitioner must guarantee financial support for the beneficiary by proving that they earn at 125% of the federal poverty line. Therefore, despite being viewed as ‘undesirable’ on account of sexuality, their class offers some, though limited, protection.

However, there is another queer South Asian migrant who is typically forgotten in the idyllic personification of the model minority on the documented pathway: the queer asylees, refugees and the undocumented who experience incarceration at different points of time and are vulnerable to violence from state and non-state actors.

Interrupted passage: The queer undocumented and asylum-seekers ⁶

Not too long ago, the US revised its policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds for seeking refugee and asylum status as long as the petitioner is able to demonstrate ‘well-founded’ fear of persecution. This route, however, is littered with challenges for new migrants to whom the legal system is convoluted, the battle is drawn out, establishing well-founded fear of persecution is arduous and the outcome is often irregular.

For every successful petition there are several that do not make it, and those that do must prove beyond doubt that they indeed are at risk due to their sexual or gender identity. For example, Ahmar Mustikhan’s asylum was approved, because he felt that ‘the gay bashing may have helped the asylum office to know for sure that I was gay’ (cited by Sharma, 2002: 9). A hate crime that took place on US soil and was filed in police records here. Lewis (2010) noted that many asylum petitioners, under duress to prove their sexuality, are increasingly turning to supplying sex tapes as proof of their sexual orientation. Her findings also suggest that male asylum-seekers are comparatively in better standing than lesbians, who are typically less inclined to discuss intimate details and are less able to prove persecution.

Though the government has theoretically taken steps to make the process more amenable, realities on the ground are starkly different. For example, the training manual for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicating officers, who work with sexual minorities, issues several thoughtful directives including cautioning officers that ‘You should be mindful that for many people there is no topic more difficult to discuss with a stranger than matters relating to sexual orientation, gender identity, and serious illness’ (2011: 29). Or, ‘When considering whether harm will amount to persecution, you must not only consider the objective degree of harm … you must evaluate the opinions and feelings of each applicant individually. Because … interpretations of what amounts to persecution vary widely’ (2011: 20). However, the reality contradicts codified intentions, as discourteous encounters with the state interrupt migration trajectories. For example, in 2008 a gay HIV positive Pakistani man, S.K., petitioned for asylum in the United States on the basis that homosexuality is criminalized in Pakistan and that he would be forced to live in secrecy and constant fear of exposure. He was denied asylum because the immigration judge ‘held that S.K., could avoid persecution by hiding his sexual orientation, marrying a woman, and having children’ (NCLR, 2008) even though S.K. is HIV positive and was in a committed relationship with a man in Minnesota. In yet another case, an Indian transgender woman’s appeal was denied due to a previous drug conviction and also because the judge decided that ‘he had failed to show government involvement’ in his persecution (the decision flagrantly uses the wrong pronoun as I emphasize in the quote). ⁷

In addition to seemingly arbitrary verdicts, further challenges are introduced through two 1996 laws that enforce mandatory custody/detention for asylum-seekers who enter the United States without proper documentation and for permanent residents in removal proceedings, detained as a result of mostly low-level criminal convictions (Human Rights Watch, 2016). Human rights organizations have alleged that sexual minorities who come to the US seeking refuge endure more abuse and violence in immigration detention centers while their cases are being decided. Transgender migrants and those who are HIV positive are particularly vulnerable. Incidents of verbal, physical and sexual assaults are rampant; improper restraints, denial of appropriate and adequate medical care (transgender asylees are often denied hormone therapies) are symbolic of systemic failures. In 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pressed a lawsuit against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), citing proof of 200 incidents of sexual abuse since 2009. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office in 2014, 20% of confirmed sexual assault cases that occur in ICE detention centers involve transgender victims, even though trans individuals comprise only 0.2% of the detained population (Hoffman, 2015). Many sexual minorities are housed under protective ‘administrative segregation,’ a euphemism for solitary confinement, even though long stays have been proven to induce irreversible psychological damage and its practice is regarded as torturous and inhumane by the United Nations. Yet, large numbers of sexual minorities languish in solitary confinement for long periods of times, purportedly for their own protection.

‘Familial repatriations’

As I have shown earlier, non-white sexual migrants experience a wide range of vulnerabilities in mainstream America as perpetual foreigners, but unlike their heterosexual counterparts, they are also vulnerable to violence within their own communities.

This section focuses on a migration trajectory that has not been discussed in the sexualities literature, i.e. the threat of forced return to the homeland; what I term as ‘familial repatriations.’ I use the term repatriation deliberately, instead of ‘return migration,’ even though it is typically used to indicate the political process where states facilitate the return of individuals (typically refugees and asylees) to their countries of origin. Return migration, as it is conventionally used, has an element of agentic decision-making, while the queer migrants I describe here did not exercise their choice in returning. Plus, decades of critical scholarship have shown that the boundaries between states and families are not so clear. The mainstream migration literature does not pay much attention to the role of families in forcing young people to migrate or be sent back ‘home’ forcibly; yet such cases are very germane to discussions of security. Young adults and second-generation migrants are particularly vulnerable to this form of violence. As I discussed earlier, there is a strategic investment in the model minority gendered heterosexist culture, wherein heterosexual marriage and family formation are considered inviolable rites of passage. For many families, homosexuality is scorned as a western lifestyle choice or a ‘white disease’ (Prashad, 2001); an idea that is inaccurate and at odds with the history and traditions of South Asian cultures (for more see Adur and Purkayastha, 2017). For some South Asian families, the ‘cure’ lies in returning the ‘transgressor’ to the homeland. When Salim came out to his South Asian American family, he said ‘my mom would be like make sure you pray, this is sinful make sure that you pray for your sins or you will go to hell and I am working on getting you back to Pakistan.’ ‘Getting him back to Pakistan’ was a threat he feared most, as he was also undocumented at that time. Another participant, affiliated with Satrang in LA, remembered an incident in which this threat was actually executed. A family, upon finding out that their son was gay, packed his bags and forcibly took him back to Pakistan. Lamya described a similar experience to me. Lamya had moved to the US to pursue higher education. Lamya’s mother, who lived in Pakistan, discovered Lamya’s sexual orientation through a private investigator. Lamya explained that her mother would be perplexed and suspicious of Lamya’s oft-repeated adamant refusal to get married. Hoping to get to the bottom of it all, Lamya’s mother resorted to hiring a private investigator. That’s how she found out about Lamya’s sexuality. Instead of confronting Lamya upon the discovery, her mother asked her to return to Pakistan on the pretext of testifying in court for an ongoing domestic dispute. Once she reached Pakistan, Lamya remembers,

I get there and its 4am so she [Lamya’s mother] said the court’s at 9:30am so she asked me to take a nap and I took a nap and woke up at 9:30am and I freaked out because I had a feeling [something wasn’t right] so I went to check my stuff … so my passport was gone, my ID, my driver’s license was gone and my phone had been disconnected and that’s when they confronted me because they had video surveillance of me and my girlfriend at the time.

Her mother refused to let her return to the US where Lamya had her partner, a job and a life. She was locked away in her room for an entire week, during which she had no access to the outside world. Over the days, Lamya pleaded to return to the US. After a week, her mother relented because during the time Lamya had refused to eat. Since returning to the US, Lamya has not stepped out of the country and vowed never to visit her homeland.

In a recent incident, a transgender man, Shivani Bhat/Shivy, was taken back to India by his parents on the pretext of visiting his ailing grandmother. Once there his parents confiscated his passport, identity documents and forcibly enrolled him in a college in Agra, a mid-size city India. His case was further complicated by his migration status – he was a permanent resident of the US and a citizen of India – even though he had lived in the US since he was three years of age. Eventually, Shivy contacted a local NGO, Nazariya, and with their help, petitioned the Delhi high court. The high court declared that the harassment was ‘uncharacteristic of Indian culture’ that has afforded legal recognition to the transgender community. Invoking the human rights framework the judge added, ‘insofar as I understand the law, everyone has a fundamental right to be recognized in their chosen gender.’ The high court ordered Shivy’s mother to return his documents, pay for his ticket back to the US and pay for his college tuition. The judge also guaranteed police protection to Shivy during the remainder of his stay in India (BBC News, 2015). Shivy is now back in the US, but is no longer in touch with his family.

In the rejections, in the deceptions and the forcible familial repatriations lies the routine violence endured by queer South Asian immigrants as they struggle to navigate a more heterosexist, repressive and conservative immigrant-ethnic culture in America.

Concluding thoughts

The paradigmatic shift from state-centric conceptions of security to a people-centric discourse was intended to draw attention to eliminating everyday violence and vulnerabilities – both material and extra-material. This article examines the extent to which the human security lens has adequately securitized migrants by focusing on an overlooked group of migrants – queer migrants of color in the Global North. I recount the raced/classed/gendered/sexualized vulnerabilities for both documented and undocumented groups of queer migrants. As migrants, not only do they suffer the anxieties associated with uprooting and leaving for unknown shores but as queer migrants, they inhabit and negotiate distinct vulnerabilities within communities, families and states. As racialized ethnics they are subject to the racist and sexualized US governance structures as well as racism within the white mainstream and white LGBT communities. As ‘sexual others’ they are outsiders to their own ethnic community, which in responding to racism, has strategically refashioned itself to live up to a heterosexist stereotype. While the documented and highly educated migrants experience sporadic violence associated with racialized homophobia, for the undocumented, the refugee and the asylee, the vulnerabilities multiply as they navigate an intensely ambivalent socio-political terrain. On the one hand, the US claims moral superiority as a queer-friendly haven, yet, on the other hand, in its everyday workings does just the opposite by demanding, but often ultimately, downplaying and negating credible proofs of sexuality and well-founded fears of persecution.

While this article has focused on the US, the experiences indicate that any understanding of sexual migration, and questions about migrant security, must engage with ‘glocal’ terrains of crisscrossing national, international and transnational politics, cultures and spaces. For example, repatriation is understood as a state-sanctioned and state-administered act of ‘returning’ migrants to their countries of origin (forcibly or otherwise) considered ‘unviable’ by the migrant receiving state. Yet Lamya’s case troubles this simplified notion by exposing the complex ways in which diasporas enact, perform and discipline belonging that jeopardize the everyday security of sexual migrants.

Additionally, the cases illustrated above offer fascinating entry-points to re-think the West-located ethnocentric frameworks that have until now projected the West as global human rights defenders par excellence when it comes to the rights of sexual minorities, and the non-West as the ‘other,’ i.e. a sexually oppressive and violently repressive ‘culture’ that must follow in the footsteps of the West to become truly modern. Contrary to that assumption, Delhi high court’s intervention in Shivy’s case endorses and enacts a commitment to human rights and security that is more authentic than the US courts’ treatment of various sexuality based asylum and refugee cases. Thus the experiences narrated above demonstrate that contrary to the assumptions, the ‘West’ is not necessarily more secure or safer than the ‘non-West,’ and that is especially true for the sexual migrant of color who must navigate the combined oppressions of nativism, racism, sexism and heteronormativity. In her book All About Love: New Vision, bell hooks astutely observed, ‘the practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control’ (2000: 153). In essence, as the foregone discussion demonstrates, queer South Asians’ experiences animate those words. Despite the lure of safe passage in the West, the reality of marginalization, violence and sheer loneliness mitigates against building lives of human dignity. Overall, the experiences of queer South Asians migrants demonstrate that in moving to a theoretical lens of human security, not only do we have to consider the institutions of the nation-state, but we must also look closely at the ways in which states, communities – co-ethnic and co-sexual communities – and families contribute to these migrants’ continuing insecurity and everyday realities.