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Abstract

In the context of international migration, LGBTQ+ individuals face unique challenges as they navigate different regimes of power. Existing research tends to conceptualize queer migrants as a singular, hyper-oppressed group, a depiction that gives insufficient attention to the complex dynamics of identities in the process of transnational movement. This dissertation reframes queer migration from a descriptive subfield into an analytic lever for sociological theory. I examine how intersectional identities are made, unmade, and remade across borders and institutions, and how those processes are patterned by gender and sexuality. Drawing on in-depth interviews with skilled Chinese LGBTQ+ migrants in the United States and Canada (N=50), I examine how queer migration (i) prompts a retheorizing of intersectionality beyond a static macro-structure but as a processual, experiential outcome prompted by changing social contexts in migration (Study 1); (ii) invites a rethinking of the relationship between identity and migration through accounting for how and when sexuality matters to mobility (Study 2); (iii) expands our understanding of the relationship between gender and sexuality by revealing their dynamics of reconfiguration in transnational circuits (Study 3). Taken together, this dissertation showcases how sexual identities and subjectivities are negotiated in the process of transnational migration and how, in turn, those negotiations shape individuals’ migration trajectories. Theoretically, I propose “queer migration as method”: a way to study identity as contingent becoming rather than fixed being. Treating migration as a verb foregrounds context, temporality, and geopolitics; treating queer as method foregrounds deconstruction, relationality, and normativity. Together they reveal identities as provisional accomplishments forged through border-crossing encounters with institutions and cultural contexts. Through these perspectives, I elevate queer migration from a niche topic to a conceptual vantage point with implications for intersectionality, theories of identity, and the sociology of gender and sexuality.