Crossing the Borders of Queer TV: Depictions of migration and (im)mobility in contemporary LGBTQ television

Introduction

In December 2018, posters appeared on the London Underground advocating ways in which one could help prevent deportations (Gray, 2018). The adverts addressed themselves to anyone reading – ‘You can stop a deportation’, they said – and depicted a woman refusing to sit down on a commercial flight forcibly transporting a detainee. Accompanied by the tagline ‘See It, Say It, Stop It’ (a clear parody of the National Rail security campaign ‘See It, Say It, Sorted’), they were the work of Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSMigrants), an activist group focused on anti-deportation work. As demonstrated by the group’s name, which echoes the 1980s activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, these activists aimed ‘to build on a proud history of queer solidarity to say: no one is illegal’ (lgsmigrants.com). In striving to create support and connections beyond borders, such activism speaks to a notable tendency in LGBTQ political work, which emphasises intersectional connections beyond group lines and solidarity in bringing together different political causes.

In many ways, this tendency has historically been invisible in the representations of the LGBTQ community seen on American and British television. As numerous researchers have noted (Kohnen, 2015; Peters, 2011; Avila-Saavedra, 2009), queer television drama has often been a middle-class, predominantly white affair. In recent years, however, a pronounced focus on BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) subjects has signalled a notable change within the landscape of new queer television. Of particular relevance is the current shift in focus towards questions of (il)legality and citizenship, a movement which parallels in the televisual landscape the aforementioned queer politics of solidarity beyond borders. In television series such as Sense8 (2015–2018), Transparent (2014–2019), Orange is the New Black (2013–2019), Years and Years (2019), The Bold Type (2017–), Superstore (2015–) and Gentefied (2020–) queerness is no longer conceived of merely as local, white and mono-national.1 While these series are very different, they all engage with the question of how LGBTQ identities are shaped not only by questions of gender and sexuality, but also by national borders, the intersections between the global and the local, and restrictions placed on the movement of individual subjects.

In spite of the recent trend, these changes in media representation have not yet been granted sufficient academic attention. While in the fields of queer and migration studies have pointed towards the often-prevalent assumption that migrants can only be heterosexual (Dhoest, 2019; Fortier 2002; Giametta, 2017; Luibhéid, 2008; Manalansan, 2006; Mole, 2018), the ways in which television and film have portrayed these issues has seldom been addressed. Exceptions can be found in the pivotal works on queer diaspora representation by Gayatri Gopinath (2005; 2018) and Alberto Fernandez Carbajal (2019), whose research on South East Asian and Muslim diasporas respectively has broken new ground in the broader field of queer of colour critique (El-Tayeb, 2011; Ferguson, 2004; Puar, 2007). Nonetheless, other analyses of queer migrant representation have mostly been limited to individual case studies (Pérez-Sánchez, 2008; Needham, 2007) and seldom address the issue of the portrayal of LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees (Lewis, 2010). This article thus aims to fill this gap through analysing how the issue of queer border crossings and LGBTQ migration has been represented on television.

This is an especially relevant question considering the homonationalist (Puar, 2007) nature of contemporary US and UK politics, which privileges xenophobic and exclusionist rhetoric that purports to ‘protect’ LGBTQ rights by keeping foreigners out, while simultaneously ignoring the anti-LGBTQ hate crimes committed by its own citizens within its own borders, as well as the migrants and refugees who are themselves LGBTQ. As Jasbir Puar (2007) notes, LGBTQ organisations and people have themselves also not been immune to such rhetoric and have sometimes contributed to the perpetuation of homonationalism and xenophobic attitudes (for a recent example, one need look no further than the notorious British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos). This article thus approaches queer television with homonationalism very much in mind, and analyses how contemporary LGBTQ representation has responded to such rhetoric through questioning notions of (il)legality and the treatment of migrants.

It looks at three very different shows; Jill Soloway’s Transparent (2014–2019), Russell T. Davies’ Years and Years (2019) and Jenji Kohan’s Orange is the New Black (2013–2019) in order to ascertain how they present the figures of the queer foreigner, immigrant and border crosser. In Years and Years and Orange is the New Black, the focus is placed on queer refugees, with both shows presenting detailed criticisms of UK and US immigration policies respectively. In Transparent, a different approach is taken, with questions of queer (im)mobility and border crossings serving as at once a topic in itself, and as a metaphor for the show’s exploration of gender binaries. While these shows differ greatly from each other, what brings them together is the different ways in which they answer the question of whom contemporary queer television represents, and to whom it belongs. Differently put, this is also a question of whose life is considered worthy of focus and televisual representation, and of how television conceptualises the LGBTQ individual, whether it be as someone who is only visible if they are white and American or British, or whether this is a category broad enough to encompass those who do not fit into the national or ethnic majority.

The border as metaphor: Transparent goes to Palestine

The article begins with Transparent, due in part to its relevance as a contemporary LGBTQ televisual text, but also because of its positioning of the wealthy, white American queer characters as border-crossers, and of the privileged gaze as that through which queer Palestinian positionalities are explored. While Transparent is usually set in Los Angeles, the fourth season follows the Pfefferman family as they journey through Israel and focuses on the question of borders through its depiction of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This is the only text of the three which does not focus on the queer migrant, but instead on the juxtaposition between the queer tourist, able to travel at will, and the queer Palestinian, whose movements are severely restricted. In particular, the show draws thematic parallels between its portrayal of settlements and the Israeli occupation on the one hand, and the question of gender borders/binaries on the other. This is done through the character of Ari Pfefferman (Gaby Hoffman), the only member of the Pfefferman family shown as raising objections against Israeli politics throughout the family trip to Israel. Referred to at this point of the show as Ali, Ari is also depicted at the beginning of their own journey towards identifying as gender nonbinary, a development which the series depicts as occurring in conjunction with their questioning of the so-called ‘binary’ between Israel and Palestine. This is done on multiple levels, with dialogues between Ari and other characters drawing direct parallels between these issues, and plotlines of Ari’s own developing friendships with Palestinians emphasising the question of borders both in terms of the occupation, and with respect to gender.

The plotline begins when Maura Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambour) and Ari travel to Tel Aviv, where Ari meets the activist Lyfe (Folake Olowofoyeku). Due to her own boycott of Israeli products, Lyfe takes Ari to Ramallah to have a drink, introducing them to numerous Palestinian friends on the way. ‘This is so weird,’ Ari tells Lyfe as they sit in a decidedly modern pub, ‘I feel like I’m in Brooklyn.…I guess the American media makes it seem like it’s all violence, which obviously it’s not. It’s just like a normal cafe’ (4:3). While Lyfe and her friend Janan (Hend Ayoub) criticise this perception due to the presence of checkpoints, this exchange is noteworthy as an example of the idealised manner in which Transparent presents Palestine. After their exchange in the Brooklyn-like cafe, Lyfe and Janan take Ari to Janan’s family farm, where she and a number of LGBTQ friends live. The farm is depicted as idyllic (Figure 1); rustic and basking in sunlight, a spirit of commonality pervades mealtimes, and marijuana is readily available. Most crucially for Transparent, it is depicted as a pivotal locus for Ari’s own exploration of their gender, which shall be discussed later in more detail. For now, it is critical to note that Transparent consigns all violence against Palestinians by the Israeli government and army to dialogue, an over-dinner conversation, while its visual depiction of Palestine speaks to a relaxed, almost hippy-like atmosphere, in which dinners are plentiful and marijuana omnipresent.

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Figure 1.

The idyllic Palestinian farm depicted in Transparent.

Viewer are told that Palestinians cannot enter Jerusalem without a permit and about a minor character being detained for a year with no official reason. What is seen, however, are friends laughing together as they eat. ‘Do you guys break the boycott for delicious treats?’, Ari jokes once the question of inaccessible fruits and vegetables is raised. ‘Only when we’re drunk’, a Palestinian woman replies through laughter (4:3). Eloquently titled ‘Pinkwashing Machine’, the episode at once reverses the much-criticised conceptualisation of Israel as the land of gay rights (Puar, 2007), and instead prescribes this label to Palestine, or at least the Palestinians depicted in the series. However, it does so by sacrificing the reality of Isreali apartheid, with life in the West Bank reduced to a sunny, LGBTQ-inclusive farm, whose residents lack neither food nor drugs.

Ari’s relationship with their newfound Palestinian friends is thus portrayed as the relaxed and liberating background of their questioning of their own gender, with their travel across Israeli checkpoints depicted as a crossing of gender binaries as well as borders. This is done on the level of dialogue as well as plot; for example, a scene in which the family argues over the question of Israel and Palestine exemplifies the rhetorical connection between occupation and gender created in the series. As the Pfeffermans ride in their family bus towards Jerusalem, Maura’s father Moshe (Jerry Adler) comments of his own business: Moshe:

If somebody offers you a chance to invest in a brand-new country, you grab it.

This rhetorical connection is particularly pronounced in an episode dealing with the Pfeffermans’ visit to a settlement. First unaware of where they are going, Ari is visibly upset by the sight of rifle-carrying army guards at the gates of the town. After the family bus enters the settlement, the next several scenes depict most of the family waiting in a parking lot, with the question of borders underscored by a white settlement wall forming the permanent background of the scenes. Ari and Maura are continually shown leaning against this wall, thus reinforcing the notion that they are not only enclosed within an oppressive space but, in Ari’s case, an oppressive identity. ‘I want to go’, Ari tells Maura. ‘I just…I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be on this stolen land.’ When Moshe protests that ‘the West Bank isn’t safe for a woman’, however, the conversation turns to gender, with Ari arguing against being included in the category of ‘woman’ (4:7). Once Moshe leaves, Maura approaches Ari, with both characters shown leaning against the wall for the duration of the conversation: Maura:

What’s going on?

It is only in its last three episodes that Transparent ventures close to depicting the true consequences of the Israeli occupation. In episode eight, evocatively titled ‘Desert Eagle’ after the eponymous handgun once manufactured by Israel Military Industries, Ari is seen going through a check point with gay Palestinian Hussen (Karim Saleh), who is then detained and taken in an undisclosed direction. Significantly, the following scene starts with the sound of a gunshot, fired from none other than a Desert Eagle handgun as Ari’s brother Josh (Jay Duplass) tries for the first time to shoot a gun. The combination of the two scenes thus presages Ari exiting the Israeli side of the checkpoint on their own in the next episode – at dusk, Ari finally leaves, upset and alone. Such disappearances also mark the season finale, as Ari’s decision to stay in Israel follows their returning to Janan’s family farm only to find it deserted, its greenhouses dismantled, chairs turned over and strewn across the ground along with the farm’s other furniture. Clearly, Jannan and her friends did not leave willingly.

Paradoxically, these multiple Palestinian disappearances end up not playing a major part in the season finale, which features another eviction, this time of an obnoxious Airbnb guest (Bill Wise) at the Pfefferman Los Angeles family home. This plotline is largely depicted as a source of humour, as the Airbnb guest exercises what Maura terms ‘a privileged civil disobedience’ (4:10). After he is finally convinced to leave, the end of the episode features the characters having dinner by the pool and, in the season’s final moments, singing ‘Everything’s Alright’ from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, which forms a major part of the season’s soundtrack. The refrain of ‘everything’s alright yes, everything’s fine/close your eyes, close your eyes and relax, think of nothing tonight’ thus pervades the final moments of the episode, the sentiment of the song underscored by the joyful Pfefferman family members singing it (4:10). Taken together, the combination of these very disparate plotlines – the disappearances of Palestinian people, Ari staying on the farm after they are gone, Maura and Shelley Pfefferman having a lovely dinner in Los Angeles – point towards the relative levels of importance the show attaches to each of these issues. While this is ostensibly always the case with the show’s central family of characters, it also attests to the relative importance attributed to non-white, Arabic lives in the US media, placing them firmly at the periphery of focus. Like the minor Palestinian characters who are shown disappearing from the story, the question of real Palestinian lives also evaporates from Transparent and is substituted by the show’s focus on the Pfeffermans’ respective journeys. Consequently, while Transparent does problematise the question of borders and points towards a queer solidarity across state lines, it does so in a problematic manner, which nonetheless subordinates these issues to the personal narratives of its principal American characters.

Dystopia and the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Re-positioning the Asylum Seeker in Years and Years

Unlike Transparent’s depiction of Palestine, Russell T. Davies recent miniseries Years and Years approaches issues of queer border crossings and migration through focusing on questions of asylum and their interrelationship with conservative political developments. Set in the fictional future, the series imagines what the next 15 years of British politics might look like, tracking the rise of Nigel Farage-like politician Vivianne Rook (Emma Thompson) from her obscure beginnings to her eventual term as Prime Minister. The future is explored through the Lyons family, who function within the miniseries as a microcosm of British society: City-based Tory-voting couple Stephen (Rory Kinear) and Celeste (T’Nia Miller) and their children, Bethany (Lydia West) and Ruby (Jade Alleyne), working-class single-mother Rosie (Ruth Madeley) and her two young children, Lincoln (Aaron Ansari) and Lee (Callum Woolford), housing officer Daniel (Russell Tovey) and his husband Ralph (Dino Fletscher), and queer political activist Edith (Jessica Hynes), as well as their grandmother Muriel (Anne Reid). The show thus utilises the Lyons family to explore diverse intersections of society, ranging from gentrification, the criminalisation of the working class and transhumanism, with a peripheral focus on issues of disability (especially significant is the casting of disabled actor Ruth Madeley in the role of Rosie Lyons, who has spina bifida in the context of the show), transgender childhood and race. Most crucial for this article is the show’s recreation of the misnamed ‘Refugee Crisis’ through its depiction of Viktor Goraya (Max Baldry), a gay Ukranian refugee who comes to the UK after what the show imagines is a future Russian invasion of Ukraine, which echoes not only the real invasion of Ukraine in 2014, but also the more recent anti-gay purges in Chechnya (HRW, 2019; Steinmetz, 2019).

Viktor is introduced in the show’s first episode, where he meets housing-officer Daniel Lyons after he puts him into temporary housing for asylum seekers. By the episode's end, the two quickly fall in love and Daniel leaves his husband. In the following episodes, this relationship is entirely determined by Viktor’s own journey as a refugee and as such exemplifies the numerous obstacles faced by asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and Europe. The particularities of being a gay asylum seeker are noted in the second episode, as Viktor is warned by his lawyer that ‘the phrase to watch out for is “live discretely”. Technically homosexuality isn’t illegal in Ukraine, so if they say you can live discretely, they can say you’re safe to be returned’ (1:2). This mirrors the specific issues faced by LGBTQ asylum seekers, who are often tasked with ‘proving’ their sexuality to those reviewing their claims (Lewis, 2014; Lewis, 2013; UKLGIG, 2013). Rachel Lewis notes that ‘while a number of countries (for example, the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Australia) have recently rejected the ‘discretion’ requirement, or the notion that LGBTI asylum applicants can return to their country of origin and be “discreet” about their sexual orientation or gender identity, a growing number of lesbian and gay asylum claims are now being refused on the grounds that the applicant’s claimed sexual orientation is disbelieved’ (2014: 961). Examples of this vary from a 2010 UK Supreme Court decision concluding only homosexuals ‘who choose to “live openly,” constitute a particular social group for the purposes of the refugee convention’ (Lewis, 2014), to a more recent example of an asylum seeker’s claim being rejected by a UK judge because he was not ‘“effeminate” enough’ (Bulman, 2019). Consequently, while such cases not only contradict UK law as well as United Nations refugee guidelines (Lewis, 2013: 961), it is clear that misconceptions about what being an LGBTQ asylum seeker means pervade the UK judicial system.

In the case of Years and Years, Viktor’s claim of asylum does not end up being rejected due to LGBTQ-specific reasons but is instead refused on the bases of his undertaking paid work in the United Kingdom, another reflection of the employment restrictions to which asylum seekers in Britain are subject (Home Office, 2019). Viktor is deported within less than 24 hours and spends the next episodes trying to secure refugee status in another European country, an all-too-difficult feat as the borders of ‘Fortress Europe’ become ever-more closed. His journey is representative of that of a number of refugees; he travels across Europe in a lorry, is continually refused asylum and, in an act of desperation, finally attempts to cross the border by boat. However, in depicting Viktor’s journey, Years and Years subverts expectations by eventually placing a white British character at his side and, ultimately, reversing their roles. In the show’s fourth episode, Daniel attempts to aid Viktor with crossing into the United Kingdom, first by smuggling him in through the storage area of a bus, then attempting to purchase a counterfeit passport and finally, once his own passport is stolen, through making the journey by boat. In the final moments of the episode, the role of the refugee and the white British national are reversed – while Viktor survives the journey, Danny does not, his dead body washed up on the shore.

The scene which reveals Danny’s death does so through one continuous shot, beginning first with a distant view of the sea, then the beach on which bodies are strewn and finally, as the camera pans downwards and closer to the beach itself, onto a close up of Danny’s own corpse, to which the attending police officer assigns the number 15. In this way, the shot moves from what is a common way of presenting the ‘Refugee Crisis’ - innumerable victims seen from a distance, each indistinct from the other – to a close up of a familiar face, who for viewers is far more than a number. Years and Years thus transposes onto the white British queer body the tragic consequences of the UK’s closed borders. Normally reserved for the ‘illegal Other’, Danny’s death reverses the false dichotomy between legal bodies, deemed as possessing the right to live and thrive, and illegal ones, meant to remain nameless, faceless and ultimately, interchangeable in the face of laws prioritising ‘firm borders’ instead of human life. The series thus brings the ‘Refugee Crisis’ intimately into the British family, no longer positioning it as a ‘foreign’ problem but, though Daniel’s death, as a political reality that can no longer be ignored.

In this way, Years and Years subverts the expectation that the white British body will remain unaffected by the Crisis, and by Britain’s closed borders. Moreover, through depicting the connection between queers both within and outside of Britain, as exemplified not only by Daniel and Viktor’s relationship, but also through the character of queer activist Edith Lyons, the series depicts the relevance of these issues to queer politics, therein arguing for an intersectional approach to questions of ethnicity, immigration and (il)legality. In portraying these issues, Years and Years undertakes two parallel approaches to British government policy. On the one hand, it utilises its own depiction of borders and border crossings to question not only how asylum seekers and migrants are denied access to citizenship, but also how those who already possess British citizenship can be effectively disenfranchised based on class. The following episode reveals the detainment of migrants in concentration camps, as well as the gradual fencing off of so-called ‘criminal zones’, i.e of council estates such as those in which Daniel’s sister Rosie Lyons lives. While not permanently detained, the behaviour of Rosie and her children is depicted as literally and constantly policed – exits and returns are only possible within a set curfew and only registered licence plates can enter the estate. Furthermore, Rosie is restricted not only in terms of individual mobility, but in terms of enterprise, as her food truck is effectively outlawed through her inability to trade beyond the zone of her council estate. The series thus literalises class distinctions by depicting physical borders around its working-class characters in place of economic ones. In spite of Rosie’s far greater freedom of movement, both she and Viktor are depicted as detained, the limits of their movements clearly demarcated. In this way, Years and Years depicts citizenship itself not as a fixed category, but rather as a matter of gradation, in which one’s access to rights is delimited by their socioeconomic status and not merely one’s proposed ‘Britishness’.

Moreover, the series also historicises the relationship between the British government and the foreign ‘Other’, most notably through the character of Prime Minister Rook connecting contemporary practices of detainment with the British Empire’s colonial military history. In a scene depicting Rook as she addresses a meeting of potential contractors vying for the chance to run government detention camps, this association is explicitly made by the PM herself, who recounts the history of concentration camps during the Boer War (‘They were British inventions’, she tells her rapt audience, going on to praise their ‘effectiveness’ in mobilising overpopulation and neglect to ‘control’ the camp’s population). Both Rook’s monologue and the name her government gives to their detention centres – erstwhile sites – makes clear the show’s preoccupation with temporality. As the clock in the series goes forward and the years change, the miniseries nonetheless reminds us that ‘everything is much older than we think’ and, crucially, that the gross injustices perpetrated by the British Empire lie not only in the past but are created anew in the present. Through blurring the perceived distinction between a detention centre and a concentration camp, the scene questions whether or not they are in fact fundamentally distinct from each other. In this way, the series advances arguments similar to those of Andrea Pitzer, who argues that ‘a concentration camp exists wherever a government holds groups of civilians outside the normal legal process—sometimes to segregate people considered foreigners or outsiders, sometimes to punish’ (2017: 5). Similarly, Years and Years mirrors the more recent arguments made by US Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, who used the same terminology to describe US-led detention camps, in which she encountered overcrowding, unhygienic conditions and a lack of adequate nutritional provision for detainees (Rennix and Robinson, 2019). Such arguments are particularly relevant within the UK context, with reports of detainees facing inadequate medical care (BMA, 2017), physical violence (Taylor, 2018) and sexual abuse by guards (BBC, 2018), as well as alarming rates of anxiety, self-harm and PTSD (Werthern et al., 2018). Coupled with the fact that the United Kingdom remains the only EU country without a legal limit on how long individuals can be detained (Bowcott, 2019), the question of temporality is crucial to that of detainment, as individuals are not only removed from the sphere of ‘normal’ society, but given no information about the length of this removal. The monologue thus highlights the importance not only of how and whether we remember the past, especially with respect to genocide and colonial crimes, but also of the concepts we use to make sense of the present.

It is therefore significant that the series ends with two acts of rebellion against the State, one at the immigrant detention centre (Figure 2), and the other at a council estate (Figure 2). Through intercutting these two events with each other, the series emphasises the connection between issues of class and migration and highlights the potential of civil unrest as a form of political action. Through its ending, Years and Years displays the belief that direct political action and an availability of information (as exemplified by both acts of rebellion being broadcast nationally) are what is necessary for the transformation of society. For the viewer, this solution to Vivienne Rook’s policies might appear too swift and simplistic; after all, it also implies that all that is necessary for change is simply making injustice public, thus ignoring the grimmer implication that widespread knowledge of the injustices perpetuated by the UK and EU response to the ‘Refugee Crisis’ has not yet led to a reversal of such practices. Nonetheless, through linking the ‘average’ white British family with the deadly effects of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ and Britain’s closed borders, Years and Years performs an epistemological shift that is all too rare in today’s British media landscape. As research analysing news media representations of migrants and refugees shows (Berry et al., 2016), the UK press stands apart from countries such as Spain, Sweden and Germany for its especially negative approach to both groups, thus pointing towards the relevance of positive representation which contradicts these xenophobic stereotypes. Moreover, it also exemplifies what can be termed as the new trend in queer television, with issues of intersectionality coming to the forefront of the screen, and adds to these trends through an exploration of immigration politics. It is within such a context that the show’s re-inscription of the murderous consequences of Britain’s closed borders onto the white British body becomes an act of solidarity and its call to action assumes a political relevance.

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Figure 2.

Years and Years mirrors class and immigration politics as a rebellion begins on the council estate (left) and the detention centre (right).

Depicting detention: Orange is the New Black and the immigration industrial complex

A similar call to political action is performed by Orange is the New Black, a series whose ground-breaking role in the development of queer television more broadly has already been much-noted, whether in its focus on transgender, butch, BAME or immigrant characters. The show’s final season continues its exploration of these issues, but focuses in detail on the US detention system, therein providing the most detailed critique of the detention industrial complex available not only in US queer television but also American television drama more broadly. Having already commented on the privatisation of the US prisons, the series envisions a repurposing of its central prison into an ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention centre, thus commenting on the realities facing immigrants and refugees. Most of the detainees in the series are shown wearing orange (a colour meant to signify new prison arrivals within the show), which works to visually underscore the criminalisation of immigrants in the United States. When commenting on their lack of legal rights, detainee and series regular Blanca Flores (Laura Gómez) summarises that ‘it looks like a prison, it smells like a prison, but it’s not a prison. It’s worse’ (7:3). Like Years and Years, the narrative of Orange is the New Black noticeably echoes numerous damning reports of the issues faced by immigrants and refugees. Moreover, it does so in far greater detail than Davies’ show and, crucially, locates the perspective from which it approaches these issues firmly as that of the immigrant. Unlike Viktor, who is seen for four of Years and Years’ six episodes primarily through Daniel’s eyes and is defined throughout the series through his connection to the British Lyons family, Orange is the New Black tells the story of ICE detention centres through how its detainees experience them.

In showing the detention centre, the series depicts real issues like overcrowding (BBC, 2019), the high prices of phone calls (Holpuch, 2019a), lack of legal council (Sidahmed, 2019), and the specific problems faced by detainees speaking minority languages such as K’Iche (Cleek 2018; Medina, 2019). The show also focuses in detail on issues of family separation (Delgado, 2019; Lind, 2018), as seen through the character Karla Córdova (Karina Arroyave) struggling and ultimately failing to retain custody of her children while in an ICE detention centre. At the same time, Orange depicts the deportation of series regular Maritza Ramos (Diane Guerrero) to Columbia, the country where she was born but does not remember, thus commenting on the cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Programme (DACA), which had granted legal leave to remain to applicants who had entered the United States as children (Holpuch, 2019a).

The series also addresses questions of how migrant victims of sexual violence are treated in US detention centres, with the story of Santos Chaj (Melinna Bobadilla), a Guatemalan migrant denied an abortion in spite of the pregnancy being the result of a rape, thus closely paralleling the experiences of real detainees (Walden, 2008). Near its ending, Orange depicts parts of Litchfield being repurposed as a courtroom into which unaccompanied children are brought to stand trial alone, echoing reports of children as young as three facing US immigration court without an attorney (Buncombe, 2018). Taken together, it is clear that the season functions as an indictment of American anti-immigration practices, bringing together plotlines based on numerous human rights violations committed by the US government and ICE detention agents.

Like Years and Years, Kohan’s series also tracks the asylum claim of an LGBTQ refugee through the character of Shani Abboud (Marie-Lou Nahnas), an Egyptian queer woman who flees her native country after her family discover her sexual orientation. Through Shani, the series introduces the issue of female genital mutilation, which Shani was subjected to as a child, as well as that of so-called ‘honour killings’ within the family. A romance develops between her and series regular Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne), but is tragically cut short when Shani’s asylum claim is denied and she is swiftly deported back to Egypt. Similarly to Years and Years, Orange is the New Black does not depict Shani’s asylum claim as being rejected due to specifically homophobic reasons, but instead as a typical part of how all claims are treated by the American immigration system. Of the four detainee stories which the series focuses on in detail, each character is presented as being deported to their countries of origin but one, underscoring the callousness with which those attempting to enter the United States for any reason are treated.

In contrast to Years and Years, whose depiction of detention focuses predominantly on the ideological approach of the state towards asylum seekers, Orange is the New Black highlights the interrelationship between governmental policy and the profit motives of the private sector. The series emphases the link between the prison system on the one hand, and the detention system on the other, utilising the fictional PolyCon Corrections company to comment on how privatisation has affected both of these sectors. Through PolyCon, Orange is the New Black further develops its already pronounced critique of the prison industrial complex (Bryan, 2019), again mimicking numerous reports of for-profit detention centres in the United States, with real companies such as CoreCivic and GEO Group deriving anywhere from 20 (GEO Group) to 25 per cent (CoreCivic) of their profits from ICE, their biggest client (Kassie 2019). As Emily Kassie (2019) reports, this amounts to over 250 million dollars spent by ICE in 2018 on its GEO Group contract, revealing the extent to which the immigrant detention system currently functions as a for-profit industry. Within the context of the series, this privatisation is continually underscored through the show’s focus on the cooperation between ICE and PolyCon management, highlighting how the cruelty of anti-immigration practices is perpetuated by a for-profit system. As PolyCon Vice President Linda Ferguson succinctly summarises in an episode, ‘federal funding for detention centres like ours is up 20 per cent. More ICE agents on the streets, plus a growing list of deportable offenses means our beds stay full. Then we ship ‘em out, we bring in even more. PolyCon charges $150 per day per detainee, which means stocks rise, people feel safer, everybody’s happy’ (7:3). Linda’s character serves here as an embodiment of corporate callousness, giving voice to the desire for profit which fuels the detention system. Unlike Years and Years, which depicts government detention camps as institutions which can and do get altered by civil unrest, Orange is the New Black focuses instead on the complexity and impermeability of the detention system itself and depicts precisely the profit motive behind such impermeability. It offers the most detailed and systematic criticism of US immigration policy available in contemporary American television drama, focusing both on how immigrants are affected by governmental policy, as well as on how governmental policy has made such suffering profitable for the private sector.

The show’s continual emphasis on overcrowding (Figure 3) and the swift circulation of people through detention centres underscores the magnitude of the problem, as epitomised by the episode depicting Shani’s deportation. Significantly titled ‘God Bless America’, the episode’s ending features not only a heavily sedated Shani being carried aboard a plane by ICE agents, but also a bus filled with people travelling across the border into Latin America, carrying another of the season’s central characters, the Salvadoran Karla Córdova. While the deportations of each of these characters is immensely significant within the context of the show, it is of crucial relevance that the very last scene of the episode features a large group of new detainees being ushered into the room where Shani and Karla used to be housed, the night’s darkness masking their faces from the viewer. These simultaneous deportations and arrivals serve to highlight how the US immigration system not only works to produce the so-called ‘illegal immigrant’ as a profitable category, but renders the particularities of every detainee as insignificant, interchangeable one from the other.

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Figure 3.

Detention centre overcrowding in Orange is the New Black.

In spite of this, both Orange is the New Black and Years and Years present the refugees’ countries of origin in distinctly simplistic and stereotypical terms, demonstrating the persistence of Islamophobic and xenophobic discourses even in pro-refugee media. In the case of Orange, Shani’s background as someone escaping from Egypt to evade falling victim to ‘honour killing’ is relayed in no more than a single scene. This scene simultaneously performs three functions: it introduces Shani’s family, shows their reaction to finding out she is queer, and ends with a remarkably sedate statement from her father that while ‘he could never hurt her’, he will not stop others from doing so (7:11). No one in the family is shown protesting to this, including Shani’s mother, with only silence greeting such an announcement. In this way, the series presents a simplistic vision of an Egyptian family and, by extension, the country, erasing any regional opposition to so-called ‘honour killings’. In so doing, it depicts ‘honour killings’ as merely an unremarkable aspect of Egyptian life, which citizens simply accept as normal in spite of their illegality. In portraying Shani’s origins in such a way, the series further promotes already ubiquitous Islamophobic media stereotypes (Bakali, 2016; Farris, 2017; Navarro, 2010; Puar, 2007; Saeed, 2007) and reflects what Naved Bakali describes as ‘tropes of “dangerous Muslim men”, “imperilled Muslim women”, and Muslim cultures as being monolithic”’ (2016: 63). Prompted by such a depiction, Muslim blogger Muslim Impossible argues that ‘the show divides Egyptians into the enlightened-now-that-she’s-in-America Shani, and those in Egypt who are all as backwards as each other’ (2019).

In Years and Years, numerous stereotypes about Ukraine and various other Eastern European countries also appear. The Russian army is referred to as ‘Soviet’ by a news reporter, clearly echoing a persistence of Cold War conceptualisations of contemporary Russia. Similarly, the third episode finds Daniel commenting on the homophobia perpetuated by Ukraine’s Communist Party, which is depicted within the scene as the most powerful party in the country despite being outlawed in 2015 due to its communist affiliations (New East Network, 2015), as well as the party’s general lack of popularity in contemporary Ukraine (in the 2014 parliamentary elections, it garnered less than 4 per cent of the vote (RFE, 2015)). The most drastic example of negative Eastern European representation however, comes in the show’s third episode, which depicts Bethany Lyons and her friend Lizzie (Shannon Hayes) travelling to Liverpool to undergo medically unnecessary surgery with the aim of becoming transhuman or, in this case, connecting their eyes to a wifi camera. The operation is depicted as performed on a boat outside British waters, with Bethany’s friend left partially blind as her eye is replaced by a faulty mechanic one. As a British nurse later tells Bethany’s mother; ‘it’s been going on for decades, cruise ships arrive in docks specially adapted as hospitals, run by Russians, Slovakians, Romanians, and people go on board for cheap operations…They’re butchers’ (1:3)

As illustrated in this plotline, the villains are simply ‘Russians, Slovakian, Romanians’, interchangeable Eastern Europeans embodying cliched horror stories about illegality and violence which, while not reflecting reality, also serve a troubling political function in the current British political landscape, where the number of hate crimes against immigrants has increased following Brexit (Dearden, 2018). Through portraying these countries as both indistinguishable and criminal, Years and Years thus perpetuates negative stereotypes about Eastern Europe which continue to mark both British and American political discourse and media (Goldsworthy, 1998; Kovacevic, 2008; Todorova, 2009; Wiedlack, 2018), and which continue to be especially pronounced within media narratives surrounding Brexit and Eastern European immigration. It is thus relevant to note that while Viktor himself is not presented in stereotypical terms, with neither his bearing nor accent matching such cliched representation (as half-Russian actor Maxim Baldry himself notes, the portrayal of Eastern Europeans as ‘baddies’ with ‘thick accents’ was an untruth he wanted to fight against in his portrayal [Gilfillan, 2019]). Nonetheless, his status as a refugee is noteworthy, thus excluding him from the category of ‘economic migrant’ through which much of the anti-Eastern European rhetoric in Britain has been framed.

In this way, both the depictions of Egyptians in Orange is the New Black and Eastern Europeans in Years and Years point towards the fact that even media which is decidedly pro-immigrant and refugee nonetheless can and does partake in racist and xenophobic representation. While both series present criticisms of their respective political contexts, their depiction of Shani and Viktor’s countries of origin echo Islamophobic and xenophobic discourses which misrepresent the contexts from where they originally stem. In spite of these issues, however, the political commentary presented in both shows is noteworthy, as their focus on immigrant and refugee experiences argues against the practice of closed borders, be it of ‘Fortress Europe’ in the case of Years and Years, or the practices of ICE in the United States. Unlike Transparent, which largely depicts the presence of checkpoints and borders in metaphorical terms, both Years and Years and Orange is the New Black focus in detail on the deadly consequences of practices which stifle free movement.

Conclusion

In August 2019, numerous news outlets (Flynn, 2019; Holpuch, 2019b; Reed, 2019) reported ICE shutting down a national hotline which allowed callers to contact the Freedom for Immigrants advocacy group free of charge. Reported under headlines such as ‘Hotline for detained migrants featured on Orange is the New Black shut down’ (The Guardian), ‘Orange Is the New Black highlighted an immigrant hotline. Then ICE shut it down.’ (The Washington Post), and ‘ICE Accused of Axing Immigrant Detention Hotline After Spot on Orange Is the New Black’ (Rolling Stone), these headlines attest to the link made by journalists between the Netflix show and the hotline, arguably accounting for the widespread media attention given to this particular event. As articles on the subject noted (Flynn, 2019; Holpuch, 2019b), the series had accurately predicted this event, with a character in the show telling another that ‘if they figure out you’re using the hotline, Big Brother shuts it down’ (7:5). This connection between fiction and reality thus eloquently points towards the stakes of such representation, with shows such as Orange is the New Black having the opportunity to critique US immigration policy on a platform as widespread as Netflix, and the potential consequences of such attention coming into sharp relief.

It is precisely due to this link between representation and the rhetoric surrounding immigration that this article has tracked the different ways in which contemporary queer television presents the act of border crossing and engages with political discourses surrounding immigration. While Orange is the New Black and Years and Years serve as direct critiques of the immigration systems on which they comment, Transparent embodies a more ambivalent positions, portraying borders as at once a real and metaphorical category. While different, each series points towards the relevance of these questions for contemporary queer television, as well as highlighting the differing levels of focus and importance these media works attach to non-white and immigrant stories. This is especially significant considering the ways in which these television texts speak to their own media contexts, which has itself perpetuated Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric, and frequently continues to demonise those who cross borders. It is also all the more important within a context in which contemporary LGBTQ politics sometimes adopts homonationalist rhetoric, excluding non-white and immigrant queers from the goals it seeks to promote.

Through analysing how these shows depict the notion of borders and the specificity of immigration politics, this article has looked in more detail at how the contemporary television drama presents individuals who are often doubly unseen, both as LGBTQ and constrained by the (il)legality of their movements across state lines. While series such as Orange is the New Black and Years and Years place an unprecedented emphasis on the issue of queer border-crossings, it is relevant that they are not the only televisual examples of such representation. Instead, a similar trend can be observed in shows as different as NBC’s Superstore (2015–), which depicts the deportation of gay Filipino character Mateo (Nico Santos), while the first two seasons of Freeform’s The Bold Type (2017–) depict the various issues experienced by the lesbian Muslim Adena (Nikohl Boosheri), as she crosses the border to enter and exit the United States. Similarly, the final moments of Netflix’s new series Gentefied (2020–) also introduce the question of (il)legal immigration, illustrating the relevance of these issues in contemporary queer televisual representation. While varied, each series contradicts conceptualisations of queer identity as synonymous only with the white national majority, and as being incompatible with discourses of asylum and migration. Instead, they present what can be seen as a new stage of queer television; where borders are viewed through an intersectional lens, and in which the proposed ‘queerness’ of a televisual work comes not solely from its inclusion of LGBTQ characters or, indeed, from aesthetic innovations, but rather from the way in which it queers homonationalist visions of LGBTQ identity.