In and Out and in and Out of the Closet: Queer Refugees and Epistemic Furniture

In 'In and Out and in and Out of the Closet: Queer Refugees and Epistemic Furniture, Rieke Schröder writes from a queer studies perspective. She invites us to think in new ways about integration beyond service delivery and legal frameworks to begin thinking about the dilemmas of cultural integration. She explores how queer refugees navigate the closet and coming out of it during their asylum process in Denmark. In order to become intelligible for the Western lens, queer refugees have to integrate themselves into Western ideas of how to be queer - what Lisa Duggan (2002) has termed homonormativity. As their pre-asylum accommodation is often queer hostile, queer refugees have to juggle a closetedness in their homes and an expected 'out and proudness' during their asylum processes. In this way, Schröder provides an intersectional analysis to refugee studies in which issues of race and nationality frequently dominate. Furthermore, her analysis homes in on one of the cultural fault lines at which queer people often find themselves as the West celebrates particular forms of queerness in contrast to perceived Muslim antagonism.