Why Ireland has become home to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers

Why Ireland has become home to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers

Why Ireland has become home to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers

A photo of three hands raised in fists on. The background is a rainbow flag.

Image: Prathan Chorruangsak

A land of picturesque beauty and a country of an illustrious history, the Republic of Ireland has made significant headway in the recognition and acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights over the last decade. This development has helped Ireland become a haven for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Ireland’s journey from a socially conservative nation to an emerging home for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers is a testament to the power of societal transformation. From the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993 to becoming the first nation to enact a national law allowing same-sex marriages in May 2015, Ireland heralds the initialisation of change. 

 

Partly ascribable to the firmly held opposing influence of the Catholic Church, the paradigm shift of Irish society from conservative-leaning to rainbow-coloured liberal didn’t happen in a day. According to the ILGA map of sexual orientation from 2016, over seventy countries criminalised same-sex sexual activities, and thirteen countries imposed death penalties. These numbers have reduced to fifty-seven and eleven, respectively in 2019. In such a world, for those who fled their homes, Ireland has been one destination.

 

“Fleeing Homophobia, Asylum Claims Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Europe,” published in 2011, estimates that 10,000 or more people in Europe file asylum claims each year due to their sexual orientation. Historically, only Belgium and Norway have collected statistics on the number of people applying for asylum in Europe based on their sexual orientation. Despite having no accuracy on the number of LGBTQ individuals requesting refuge in Ireland, anecdotal data suggests that a significant fraction of the 2,443 individuals who requested asylum here between the years 2006 and 2015 identify as LGBTQ+.

 

“Even though I was not legally prosecuted for being a homosexual in my home country, but I was always socially charged at every stage of my life for being who I am. My family and friends made me feel that my sexuality is sinful,” said James (pseudonym used) in a conversation.

“I have been living happily in Ireland with my husband since 2017 and it has never occurred in the past six years that I had to hide myself in the binary crowd. We’re planning on adopting a baby, too.”

The expression of relief on James’s face for being able to find a home for himself and his husband was the sign of a gift from Irish society to not just James but also to many others like him. However, the process of creating a peaceful space for the LQBTQ+ immigrants in Ireland has not been free of challenge. Research published in 2018 by National LGBT Federation (NXF), “Far from Home: Life as an LGBT Migrant in Ireland,” states that 54% of the survey respondents felt exclusion and 40% experienced homophobic abuse, a reminder that a world of acceptance is still a long way away.

 

However, many groups are working to make a more accepting society a reality. LGBT Ireland is a national organisation which has been enormously contributing towards the betterment of the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland with a significant impact on the lives of LGBTQ+ immigrants, travellers, refugees and asylum seekers. ‘Is Rainbow Muid – We Are Rainbow’ is an in-person peer and social group supported by LGBT Ireland. The Irish Refugee Council identifies challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in the process of seeking international protection, both during the decision-making process and reception of the facilities. Some of these challenges include:

  • Lack of early recognition of the unique needs of LGBT applicants, as well as delayed access to specialised medical guidance, counselling services, social assistance, and legal counsel attentive to their claims;

  • Evaluation of the legitimacy of cases for asylum based on sexual orientation or gender identity;

  • Confinement to Direct Provision accommodation with scant access to essential services and social supports;

  • Experiences with bullying and sexual harassment directed towards LGBT people living in ‘Direct Provision accommodation’.

To overcome these challenges, the Irish Refugee Council advocates for the well-being of LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum through efforts such as their ‘Identity Peer Support Group’.

 

The efforts of great individuals of the Irish nation and organisations like the Irish Refugee Council, LGBT Ireland, Rainbow Railroad Ireland, Outhouse, Irish Council for Civil Liberties and many more have brought tremendous positive changes in making Ireland a home for the LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers. Like someone anonymously said, “an open mind, a good heart and an empathetic soul, is all it takes.”

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Ruled Over While Tilling the Soil: Trans Life, Palestine, and the Texture of Exile

Ruled Over While Tilling the Soil: Trans Life, Palestine, and the Texture of Exile

Ruled Over While Tilling the Soil: Trans Life, Palestine, and the Texture of Exile

A cloudy day above number of buildings' walls ripped apart with building materials scattered on the ground
Penelope Norman
Penelope Norman
1st of July 2022

 

I was walking down Nassau Street one night in early December and I couldn’t stop thinking about Sunnyvale, a trans-majority community centre in north Stoneybatter, which had just been evicted. After the fight, everyone who called the industrial lot home got together to help build it back – climbing over makeshift barricades and crawling through murky halls littered with broken possessions. We picked up nail-sized shards of glass smashed on the concrete ground and took apart walls ripped out of abandoned buildings and caravans after hours of assault by heavies’ invading sledgehammers. We don’t like to talk about it much, though the day and every moment since tends to weigh on us and emerge one way or another. Every humiliation and injury by the gardaí, every community space slated to become a hotel, every time we look at one another and get blocked behind some wall that keeps us from talking about what happened, it’s like we’re living through the eviction all over again, digging ourselves deeper away from the surface.

I reflected on all of this while turning onto Fitzwilliam Street Lower to a house someone I knew had rented for the weekend on Airbnb. It was supposed to be a Haunukkah party with a few friends I’d met in our college’s Jewish society. The host and her family, who had flown all the way from Texas, were Ashkenazi Jews who had all been through all of their life cycle events and education at an average synagogue. Most of us in the college society had a much different experience. Either we had just completed our conversion, or our families had been Jewish for ages and either ignored the fact or hid it from us. My family in particular had gone completely underground (one might say stealth.) After struggling for years to pull anything from my mother and grandmother’s sealed mouths, I learned we were Sephardim and had concealed our Jewish roots for over a century. In other words, everybody in the group was Jewish, just in different, equally complicated ways. The society was and remains an important space for us to meet others and untangle our identities together. The only other relevant fact for what follows is that I had just gotten a new tattoo which was visible under the sleeve of my dress. It said, in Yiddish, ‘באפריי פאלעסטינע [Free Palestine].’

In 2007, the Israeli state decided to launch a marketing campaign to change how the rest of the world viewed its government. The campaign was called Brand Israel and it aimed to promote Israel as a bastion of rights for gay and lesbian people, encouraging LGB tourism to cities like Tel Aviv. At that same time, violence and hatred against Queer minorities was still present in the city, with a mass shooting in 2009 injuring seventeen members of the community. This was specifically part of an effort of what Palestinian activists have identified as ‘pinkwashing’, ‘how the Israeli state and its supporters use the language of gay and trans rights to direct international attention away from the oppression of Palestinians.’ One of the major rhetorical effects of pinkwashing Israeli apartheid has been a new resurgence of Orientalist language which defines Palestine and other regions in the Middle East as inherently repressive in their attitudes towards gender and sexuality (Said, 205). It also defines the Occident, Israel, as welcoming and open minded towards Queerness in comparison (the most important writer on the topic of Orientalism, Edward Said, was Palestinian.)

This ties into a common myth identified by philosopher Gayatri Spivak as ‘white men are saving brown women from brown men’, which sticks itself in our minds by structuring how we talk about international gender issues, limiting the ways resistance or acknowledgement of colonial structures can be discussed (Spivak, 92). To put it more simply, by leaning into gendered, colonial rhetoric which argues the ‘West’ saves the gendered minority of the ‘East’ from its own ‘inherent’ patriarchy, Israel has painted itself as a kind of widely recognisable saviour, giving it power in the eyes of people familiar with that rhetoric regardless of what they actually do. The most obvious problem with this is that it talks about Israel’s settler colonialism as a kind of protection or salvation, making it seem like the mass exodus comprising the experience of the Nakba (meaning ‘The Catastrophe’, a term referring to the ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War) was a kind of gift.

One of the most famous retellings of the creation of humankind, as detailed by what Christians call the Book of Genesis, is the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. Milton was a Calvinist and an ally of Oliver Cromwell who wrote during the English Civil War. His poem tells the story of Man’s fall due to the schemes and manipulations of Satan, who had just been cast into Hell after turning against his Creator. In the epic, Adam and Eve are depicted as the ultimate example of binary genders in a heterosexual union. When they are first referred to by name in the poem, they are described as, ‘Adam first of men […] first of women Eve.’ In a conversation with Adam in the first half of the text, Eve says,

 “O thou for whom
And from whom I was form’d flesh of thy flesh,
And without whom am to no end, my Guide
And Head, what thou hast said is just and right,”

 

She is written to play a passive role by submitting to her husband, testifying to his rationality and morality. When it comes time for them to Fall, Eve is seduced by Satan’s speech as a snake,

 

“his words replete with guile

Into her heart too easie entrance won:

Fixt on the Fruit she gaz’d, which to behold

Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound

Yet rung of his perswasive words, impregn’d

With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth.”

 

Adam on the other hand gets to ruminate on his decision to join her in turning against their Creator, completing the epic’s ongoing conversation about the nature of the Divine and Free Will. He was given the time to make a choice. In other words, Paradise Lost tells the story of the first Man’s foolish, gullible wife and her original sin which resulted from her inability to use critical thinking to avoid trusting a sketchy talking snake.

In Bereshit 1:27-28, from what the Christians call Genesis, the first human was created. To quote in translation,

 

“And יהוה created humankind in the divine image,
creating it in the image of יהוה —
creating them male and female.
יהוה blessed them and יהוה said to them”

In other words, the first human (Adam in Hebrew has connections to both ‘human’ and ‘soil’, referring to how this first Human was created from the material of the earth) was neither male nor female, but contained both aspects within them in a unique combination. When their partner was created,

 

“יהוה took one of [his/their] sides, and closed up the flesh at that site. And יהוה fashioned the side that had been taken from the Human into a woman, bringing her to [him/them].”

 

This gets trickier when we remember that the Sex/gender system which tries to divide bodies and social roles into two polarised categories didn’t really become a thing until much later in the historical record. In other words, in Hebrew translation and Jewish tradition, the creation of Adam and Chava wasn’t the formation of the original cishet nuclear family, but the formation of self and other, the making of difference among all people. This interpretation has been told and retold for generations, treasured by Queer Jews and passed onto their chosen descendants. Notably, conversations about this section of Torah and its implications for Jewish life and practice began to gain newfound attention by rabbis in the sixteenth century after the perils of the Reconquista and Inquisition forced Jews out of Portugal and Spain, a population who would become known as Sephardim and eventually lead, albeit after centuries, to me. The most relevant themes which come up from this story specifically focus on the creations of further differences, between a home made for us and a wilderness we are expelled into or living as part of a shared community and dying in the fossils and shackles of violence from the past.

A recent UN publication not only stated that the situation in Palestine was apartheid, and it also described the occupied territories as an, ‘open-air prison.’ To cross between regions, people must undergo invasive searches and checkpoint procedures, conditions of which vary based on assigned nationality. To navigate these checkpoints, people are required to have a series of corresponding identity cards, permits, and other documents; these borders have been recognised as an explicitly gendered space, a ‘social geography of horror,’ where permissions for crossing are granted on a sexist basis (they’re usually only granted to women for exceptional medical or religious purposes) and the facilitation of crossing is founded on strict compliance with embodied gender norms as enforced by Israeli soldiers’ rifles and gazes. The creation of strict gender norms in the carceral structure of the prison or occupied colony is not unique to Israel; Angela Davis in her book Are Prisons Obsolete? details how, ‘the deeply gendered character of punishment both reflects and further entrenches the gendered structure of the larger society.’ (Davis, 61) Along similar lines, Dean Spade argues how,

 

“For trans people, administrative gender classification and the problems it creates for those who are difficult to classify or are misclassified is a major vector of violence and diminished life chances and life spans […] The aim of creating increased security for the nation hangs on the assumption of a national subject that deserves and requires that protection: a subject for whom these identity classification and verification categories are uncontroversial. (Spade, 77-85)”

In other words, the creation of a security state or prison system relies on the enforcement of an ideal person, a person who is defined by the social systems constituting race and gender in that state. For Palestine, the carceral subject under Israeli occupation is the Palestinian who will soon be eliminated by the settler colonial state. Cruelty is the goal; they are not meant to survive. For trans subjects in particular, the systems of policing, surveillance, and apartheid are made even more dangerous by an increased risk from the normal dangers of not fitting into a stable, identity-based system. Israel and its allies don’t care if they discriminate against trans Palestinians because, in their eyes, they are just particularly targetable Palestinians who shouldn’t be in Israel in the first place. Pinkwashing is not only a dishonest marketing strategy, but also a hypocritical alibi for genocide.

At the party, I decided to help my hosts make latkes, fried potato cakes traditionally served during the holiday. A number of friends I expected would be there had sent their apologies, so for a while the only people around to chat with were all standing with me in a circle binding shavings together and browning them in oil. We made jokes back and forth about which toppings are more Jewish, applesauce or sour cream. I learned all of the men in the family had joined the military in America and were quite proud of this fact. In my head, I could see my dad with his eyes locked on me gripping the honorary sword he received for his work on the border in Korea, keeping it safe like the tokens his dad had taken from Okinawa in the forties. My uncle had flown south to Peru at seventeen and died in a plane crash, and at the same age a version of me went east and quickly transitioned; to him, we both went in the wrong directions. Their father wore a t-shirt with the names and numbers of the people he had served with. I was cutting myself with a grater, spilling blood in the onions, while the rest of them moved and chatted together like a frictionless machine.

I was aware of the fact that I was different from the people around me, what I couldn’t admit was how much I wanted what they had. I needed to feel like I could be in a space without fear of hurting everybody else or being hurt myself. The sister suddenly saw my tattoo and asked with excitement what it meant. I knew I couldn’t tell the truth; I couldn’t lose another home. I tried to shrug it off saying, ‘it’s from an old protest chant.’ They pressed on, wanting to know word for word what I had decided to mark on my body. I lied. ‘It means, “There is no Planet B.”’ It seemed to work; I can’t be sure whether or not they bought it, but they were satisfied either way. I felt caged in and alone, after all that had happened there was no one around the room I could turn to for recognition. They went on to joke about the minor differences between Texas and Dublin. I stepped out into the hallway and tried to feel my feet on the ground.

 

 

Featured Image: ‘Sunnyvale Lost’ by Penelope Norman

This article was supported by: Engagement Coordinator Aislin

 

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World Refugee Day: UN urges wealthy countries to do more

World Refugee Day: UN urges wealthy countries to do more

On this year’s World Refugee Day, the UN puts the spotlight on helping refugees to become self-reliant in the new place they call home. At a time where 86% of refugees worldwide are hosted in developing countries, ensuring their self-reliance can lessen the stress put on local communities, that already face a lack of or reduced access to basic resources. Wealthy countries, the UN said, need to support this effort on a greater scale.

Every year on June 20th, World Refugee Day raises awareness about the unique perils which refugees face in their daily lives. By celebrating the courage which refugees harbour, as well as drawing attention to the plight which they face, this international day is an important event in the humanitarian calendar.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) describes a refugee as someone who has been “forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence”. Two-thirds of refugees worldwide come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia – with the largest refugee camp in the world located in Dadaab, Kenya, hosting over 329,000 people. Refugees differ from Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), who are forced to flee from their homes but do not (or can not) cross international borders.

World Refugee Day began in 2001 after the United Nations General Assembly passed a Resolution 55/76 and declared the annual event. This initial day commemorated fifty years since the 1951 Refugee Convention in Geneva, which defined what a refugee is, their legal protection and social rights. While the convention was mainly limited to European refugees in the wake of World War II, the convention remains the basis for global humanitarian definitions of refugeedom.

In Ireland, the situation of asylum-seekers have brought international attention. According to the Refugee Council of Ireland, in 2018, 70.3% of applications for protection status were rejected. These asylum-seekers who wait for this decision are housed in Direct Provision system, given basic accommodation and pittance living allowance. The system has been criticised widely in both public discourse and international media (including the New Yorker).

World Refugee Day is a stark and important reminder of the responsibility of wealthier countries to provide answers to the global refugee crisis, by hosting refugees or by providing humanitarian and development support in host countries to help refugee communities become self-reliant.

 

 

 

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Image courtesy of EU/ECHO Pierre Prakash.

Climate change refugees: the next global crisis

Climate change refugees: the next global crisis

Between 50 million and 200 million people could be displaced by 2050 as a direct result of climate change writes PHOEBE MOORE (Photograph by lightsinmotion / flickr)

Paleoclimatology is the study of climates in the geological past using proxy records gathered from tree rings, ice cores and other such biological substances, and this proves that climate change is natural. Global warming however, is not, being a recent and very threatening phenomenon within climate change which is caused by humans and thus can only be prevented by us. It occurs as a result of a carbon buildup in the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned.

Once in the atmosphere, carbon manifests itself as a greenhouse gas which contribute significantly to the heating of the atmosphere; global warming. Greenhouse gases are currently at an unprecedented level. The collective environmental impact of global warming includes sea levels rising (i.e. towns flooding), increased drought (challenging farming lands), more frequent storms (i.e. repeated destruction of homes), precipitation changes (i.e. reduced biodiversity).

In the extreme aforementioned cases these cause displacement from destroyed homes, damaged livelihoods and dislocated communities. Moreover there is a socio-economic disparity, where certain areas (and predominantly third-world countries) are more affected. Bangladesh which lies less than five metres above sea level and is estimated to disperse approximately 20 million climate refugees by 2050. Malawi suffers extremely low income levels of around $975 or less/year, and the majority of citizens are farmers living in rural areas; however severe drought has ravaged the landscape for the past 25 years leaving 6.5 million malnourished. Sudan, Africa’s largest country, has its highest risk of flooding but also its biggest desertification because of deforestation; this has made rainfall more infrequent and less farming land.

Although climate change more greatly affects the developing countries, more developed countries (particularly in the West) are increasingly impacted. For instance rising sea levels is reclaiming 2mm a year of Venice’s popular European tourist destination. More than 65 million people were displaced by conflict and persecution in 2015, according to the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency. Figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre show that since 2009, an estimated one person every second has been displaced by a disaster, with an average of 22.5 million people displaced by climate- or weather-related events from 2008-2015.

And the situation is only getting worse: between 50 million and 200 million people could be displaced by 2050 because of climate change, according to the UN.

These figures would vastly eclipse the current numbers of people being forced to flee their homes in war-torn countries, particularly in the Middle-East. The so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe (which in reality hosts a fraction of the world’s refugees compared to developing countries), has been met with a rise in Islamophobia, militarisation of borders and the controversial EU-Turkey deal. In the UK it played a huge role in the Brexit campaign, and most recently, the election of Donald Trump in the US and his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The “build a wall” mentality is certainly not an answer now to the largest displacement of people since the second World War, it will be even less so when Trump has to confront his previous assertions that “global warming was created by the Chinese”. America, the West and the world has to confront the climate catastrophes waiting around the corner: if not, we risk a global humanitarian crisis on an unimaginable scale.

Africa Day 2016: vox pop

Africa Day 2016: vox pop

Cian Doherty reports from conversations about migration at Africa Day 2016.

Africa Day returned to Dublin’s Farmleigh Estate on Sunday 29th May for a celebration of all things Africa. An estimated 30,000 people came to enjoy the blissful sunshine at the family-friendly event, and the annual line-up of African music, food and culture was as special as ever. Now in its ninth year, the festive event marks the linkages between Ireland and Africa, as well as giving Ireland’s African community a day to celebrate together.

Much has happened in the international arena since last year’s outing, the refugee crisis particularly touching a nerve in Ireland. With all this in mind, I spoke to a number of the attendees about the day itself, migration and related issues.

What do you think of the celebration of Africa Day?

It’s very good, very exciting with the different cultures. I don’t know much because I was born in Ireland so seeing all this is pretty new – Anisho Namugere, Uganda.

Amazing! I think it’s very important for people not from Africa to get to know the beauty and the heritage and the amazing food – NC Grey, Nigeria

I think it’s amazing because there’s a lot of people in Ireland who are African. And there’s a lot of Irish people who’ve never been to Africa so it’s good for them to get a taste for African culture – Tina Nsubuga, Uganda.

8. Marang Letshabo, Botswana & Mags Lacy, Dublin cropped

Marang Letshabo & Mags Lacy

How do you think Ireland could be more welcoming to newcomers to the country?

Be more understanding. Everyone has a different story so they should learn other people’s and be open to other cultures – Anisho Namugere, Uganda

We need to engage with the newcomers more, like at events like this one. It would help integration a lot – Catalina Suarez, Chile

I think Irish people just need to be educated a little bit more; a bit more understanding and a bit more open – Gareth Sharkey, Blanchardstown

Through things like this. Getting to learn about us and know what we’re about so they can relate to us – NC Grey, Nigeria

Encourage Irish people to learn foreign languages – Oliver Plunk, Cork

In the past 10 to 20 years when the country opened its doors there’s been a very good reception. Ireland is on the right path and I think they’re doing a good job so far – Marang Letshabo & Mags Lacy, Botswana

We need to tackle direct provision and how we even do asylum in this country. Hopefully the single procedure will deal with that. I think it’s an absolute scandal that we still have people in DP centres up to 14 years. We have children growing up in institutions and it’s just not right  – Eithne Lynch, Dublin

More sessions or ceremonies like this one to get people to get to know each other – Vivian Mabuya, South Africa (winner of best dressed African woman)

Let them work! Give them the dignity of work. Direct provision is a disgusting way to treat anybody. And we’re all turning a blind eye – Pearl Whelan, Clondalkin

9. Saheed Ibrahim, Nigeria

Saheed Ibrahim

Can you tell me something interesting about your home country?

We have something called a new yam festival. It’s celebrated at the beginning of the yam season because we tend to see new yam as new life – NC Grey, Nigeria.

The people are very loving, very open. You can see that we were oppressed for years but there’s a lot of resilience there – Catalina Suarez, Chile.

Botswana is the number one capital of safari in the world. If you want to do safari, Botswana is the place to go – Marang Letshabo.

In Nigeria we dress a lot like this. We dress in the form of our culture and make sure we follow the tradition – Saheed Ibrahim, Nigeria.

Brazil is very diverse and we are in an important moment for the black community there. People are understanding how they can be stronger and are reconnecting with their African ancestry. Before people were trying to be similar with European people but now they’re prouder of their roots – Thais Muniz, Brazil.

Thais Muniz, Brazil

Thais Muniz

A way to go

Maybe it was something to do with the stunning whether, but most people I talked to seemed to think Ireland is on the right track and festivals like Africa Day is the way to integrate newcomers into Irish society.

The fact remains though that Ireland has recognised much fewer asylum claims than many smaller or similarly-sized countries, since 2012 (it’s 20 times fewer than Norway’s). Although if the suggestions from the contributors to this vox pop were taken on board, Ireland could proudly reclaim our reputation of the ‘land of 1,000 welcomes’.

Author: Cian Doherty

Cian is a Dubliner working for GOAL as a Donations Officer. He studied Arts in UCD and completed an MA in International Relations in DCU. Cian has worked overseas with UNAIDS in Malawi and has volunteered in Mexico and Mozambique.

Photo credits: Cian Doherty