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Claiming Gay: Exploring the Refugee Determination Process Walters, C. R.

Abstract

Approximately 80 countries criminalize same-sex sexual acts or behaviour that is considered deviant; seven of these countries maintain a death penalty (BBC, 2014). People impacted by criminalization and persecution are therefore seeking asylum overseas. Canada, a humanitarian beacon of hope for many, accepts refugees on the basis of sexual orientation and over the years there has been an influx of sexual minority refugees and refugee claimants. However, before Canada accepts the claimants they must build evidence and plea their cases to the Immigration and Refugee Board. This is known as the refugee status determination process. How the refugee claimant experiences this determination process, particularly around the need to prove one’s gay identity, is the foundational aspect of this qualitative, phenomenological study and is presented in this paper through several themes that arose through participant interviews.

Item Metadata

Title
Claiming Gay: Exploring the Refugee Determination Process
Alternate Title
Claiming Gay : Exploring the RSD Process
Creator
Walters, C. R.
Date Issued
2017
Description
Approximately 80 countries criminalize same-sex sexual acts or behaviour that is considered deviant; seven of these countries maintain a death penalty (BBC, 2014). People impacted by criminalization and persecution are therefore seeking asylum overseas. Canada, a humanitarian beacon of hope for many, accepts refugees on the basis of sexual orientation and over the years there has been an influx of sexual minority refugees and refugee claimants. However, before Canada accepts the claimants they must build evidence and plea their cases to the Immigration and Refugee Board. This is known as the refugee status determination process. How the refugee claimant experiences this determination process, particularly around the need to prove one’s gay identity, is the foundational aspect of this qualitative, phenomenological study and is presented in this paper through several themes that arose through participant interviews.
Subject
Refugees; LGBTQ; Immigration; Queer migration; Gender Idenity; SOGI; Refugee Status Determination
Geographic Location
Canada
Genre
Graduating Project
Type
Text
Language
eng
Series
University of British Columbia. SOWK 554C
Date Available
2017-05-08
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0347337
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61529
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Social Work, School of
Campus
UBCV
Peer Review Status
Unreviewed
Scholarly Level
Graduate
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International