B Camminga
B Camminga (they/them) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, South Africa. Their work considers the interrelationship between the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North and the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from the African continent. In 2018 they were runner up in the Africa Spectrum: Young African Scholars Award, which honours outstanding research by up-and-coming African scholars. Their first monograph Transgender Refugees & the Imagined South Africa was published in 2019 (Palgrave). The book received honourable mention in the Ruth Benedict Prize for Queer Anthropology from the American Anthropology Association and the 2019 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies (with Aren Azuira). They are the co-convenor of the African LGBTQI+ Migration Research Network (ALMN). The network aims to advance scholarship on all facets of LGBTQI+ migration on, from and too the African continent by bringing together scholars, researchers, practitioners, activists and service providers to spark critical conversations, promote knowledge exchange, support evidence-based policy responses, and initiate effective and ethical collaborations. Presently they are working on the first collection addressing African LGBTQI+ migration – Queer and Trans African Mobilities: Migration, Asylum and Diaspora (Bloomsbury 2022)
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In the case of Africa, the expansion of anti-LGBT laws and the prevalence of hetero-patriarchal discourses are regularly cited as evidence of an inescapable savagery. The figure of the LGBT refugee – often portrayed as helplessly awaiting rescue – reinforces colonial notions about the continent and its peoples.
Queer and Trans African Mobilities draws on diverse case studies from the length and breadth of Africa, offering the first in-depth investigation of LGBT migration on and from the continent. The collection provides new insights into the drivers and impacts of displacement linked to sexual orientation or gender identity and challenges notions about why LGBT Africans move, where they are going and what they experience along the way
Refugee camps are often posed as non-spaces, places of displacement, places of exile and enforced invisibility. In light of this, how might we conceive of those encamped within the camp? How might we think of a designated space within non-space? How might we understand the extreme visibility of transgender people in relation to their encampment and the perception that they are the preeminent example of homosexuality in relation to the tensions around discretion and invisibility? Drawing on Agamben’s (2005) notion of migrants as homo sacer — those excluded through inclusion — this paper seeks to rethink states of exception in relation to transgender asylum seekers within Kakuma, noting their dual existence in what Alumine Monroe (2002) has theorised as states of hyper-visibility and seeming bureaucratic invisibility in a space, the refugee camp, constructed upon the logic of invisibility. Moreover, this paper seeks to consider what it might mean to exist in a lifelong state of precariousness and suffering to be orientated as such, which rather than being afforded minor reprieve in Kakuma, as a UNHCR-run refugee camp, is prolonged.
In the case of Africa, the expansion of anti-LGBT laws and the prevalence of hetero-patriarchal discourses are regularly cited as evidence of an inescapable savagery. The figure of the LGBT refugee – often portrayed as helplessly awaiting rescue – reinforces colonial notions about the continent and its peoples.
Queer and Trans African Mobilities draws on diverse case studies from the length and breadth of Africa, offering the first in-depth investigation of LGBT migration on and from the continent. The collection provides new insights into the drivers and impacts of displacement linked to sexual orientation or gender identity and challenges notions about why LGBT Africans move, where they are going and what they experience along the way.
It was a desire to address this knowledge gap that inspired the Vulnerability Amplified project. Its aim was to collect baseline data that could augment existing research, as well as guide and support future advocacy interventions. This was achieved through three anonymous surveys administered via the WhatsApp messaging platform. As well as capturing basic demographic information, the surveys posed simple questions about participants’ gender, sexuality, documentation status, reason for migrating and experiences of harassment and/or violence. The surveys were circulated through established community networks, which allowed for data to be sourced from people who might otherwise be unable or unwilling to participate in research.
The final report analyses data from 381 respondents, primarily based in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Tshwane but also from other parts of the country. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that qualitative data on this population has been made available.
We hope the baseline data presented here will inform service delivery, facilitate movement-building, support needs analysis and assist with advocacy and fundraising efforts