It’s OK to be Gay in Sweden – as long as you embody white ‘Swedishness’

LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden experience systemic discrimination, tackle multifaceted challenges on an everyday basis and struggle for safety. On a legal note, LGBTQI+ asylum seekers are, during their case assessment procedure, subjected to a distinct set of requirements and expectations, as upheld by the Swedish Migration Agency. These requirements and expectations postulate a narrow, exclusively Western conception of what it means to be ‘queer’, which ironically relies on heteronormative imaginings of the Swedish nation-state. Authorities within the Swedish Migration Agency make use of standardized credibility assessments, which treat sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as a universal, unambiguous and monolithic experience. As such, when Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression (SOGIE) asylum cases are assessed, the decision-making process is guided by the need to provide ‘objective proof’ of the claimant’s LGBTQI+ background. The Swedish Migration Agency furthermore expects SOGIE claimants to internalize shame and homophobia as part of their life course as LGBTQI+ individual (Gröndahl, 2020). Here, ‘objective proof’ cannot be understood as a neutral criterion. Instead, credibility tests reiterate racial, ethnic, societal and cultural Swedish norms, which are then projected on the claimant’s sexual and gender identity. 

The Swedish government prides itself on its commitment to ‘gender equality’, which is further promoted as a policy priority area. However, Swedish ‘gender equality’ rests upon cisnormative conceptions of the gender binary and, in the process, explicitly excludes and discriminates against other forms of gender expression and identity, such as, but not limited to, non-binary and transgender identities. Moreover, transgender persons in Sweden continue to be pathologized under the gender recognition law, which requires them to undergo medical examinations before being allowed to change their legal gender (TGEU, 2022). The absence of self-determination/identification in the process of changing one’s legal gender remains as a major obstacle in the everyday life of queer forced migrants in Sweden. For transgender asylum seekers and refugees, these legal restrictions are particularly problematic, as they reinforce their political and institutional vulnerability and further undermine their self-determination. These vulnerable realities for LGBTQI+ asylum seekers persist within Swedish housing policies, which fail to incorporate and respond to their needs, namely when they face violence, exclusion and targeted hate crimes in accommodation centers. Rather than implementing institutional reforms to guarantee the safety of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers, asylum accommodation in Sweden feeds on heteronormative cis-gender and family policy (Wimark, 2021). The Swedish legal apparatus thus discriminates against and erases the experiences of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers through multiple processes in different areas of everyday life. 

As SOGIE applicants, LGBTQI+ asylum seekers face double discrimination, notably on the institutional level, as well as on the basis of racial and ethnic bias. With the new Swedish government, practices of far-right mainstreaming and populist discourse have been accompanied by openly restrictionist immigration and asylum policy. This political environment is particularly dangerous for minority groups, namely LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees, as they are turned into scapegoats and imagined as a ‘threat’ towards Swedish ‘national cohesion’. The rise of hate crimes targeting LGBTQI+ individuals, especially those with a migratory background, in the Swedish context is thus a very real concern. The safety of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden is furthermore jeopardized by the phenomenon of homonationalism: the alliance between nationalist, right-wing politics and selective LGBTQ issues/rights in an attempt to create cultural, religious, ethnic and racial hierarchies: “Homonationalism promotes the disenfranchisement of racial and sexual “others” and in return creates ethnic-centered imagines of the white, middle-class gay Swede (Jungar & Peltonen, 2017). As LGBTQI+ issues in Sweden continue to be co-opted by right-wing political actors, LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees from the MENA region are disproportionately hit by racial and discriminatory violence (Kehl, 2018). Following the weaponization of race and ethnicity for right-wing political gain, the current political environment in Sweden causes LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees to be particularly vulnerable and marginalized. 

Unfortunately, Sweden remains, like many other European states, a space in which the LGBTQI+ community is envisioned as embodying the ethnic, racial and socio-economic majority group. Being non-heteronormative in Sweden is thus embedded in a broad web of racialized norms, which in return severely affects the legal, social, political, economic and health-related realities and opportunities of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees. An intersectional lens is needed to effectively address and respond to the different layers of vulnerability such groups face. Ultimately, we need to understand that LGBTQI+ rights in Sweden should in no way be conditional or reserved for a specific group, but instead function as a means to uplift and protect ALL queer persons. In order to create a system of inclusion, sustainable empowerment and empathy for queer forced migrants in Sweden, comprehensive changes and transformative mechanisms must be put in place to induce much-needed social, economic and political change in Sweden. Arguably, community-based programs for building up the resilience and self-sufficiency of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees in the long-term are key factors in achieving a more representative and inclusive Swedish society. 

By Kaja Simmen

References

Gröndahl, A. (2020) Avslagsmotiveringar i Hbtqi-Asylärenden:  En rättsutredning av Migrationsverkets, migrationsdomstolarnas och Migrationsöverdomstolens prövning av sexuell läggning, könsidentitet och könsuttryck, RFSL.

Jungar, K. and Peltonen, S. (2017) ‘Acts of homonationalism: Mapping Africa in the Swedish media’, Sexualities, vol. 21, no. 5-6. Pp. 715-737. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716645806. 

Kehl, K. (2018) ‘ “In Sweden, girls are allowed to kiss girls, and boys are allowed to kiss boys”: Pride Järva and the inclusion of the ‘LGBTA other’ in Swedish nationalist discourses’, Sexualities, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 674-691. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460717748621. 

TGEU (2022) Sweden proposes LGT reform without self-determination, [Online], Available at: https://tgeu.org/sweden-proposes-lgr-reform-without-self-determination/. 

Wimark, T. (2021) ‘Housing policy without violent outcomes – the domestication of queer asylum seekers in a heteronormative society’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 703-722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1756760.