Drag Across Borders: Negotiating 2SLGBTQ+ Refugee/Migrant Being and Belonging Through Drag Personas

This qualitative study uses drag performance to better understand some of the complexity of 2SLGBTQ+ refugee and other migrant identities and experiences of in/exclusion from (national) belonging in Canada. Racialized Western border regimes and reception frameworks position refugees/migrants along an in/voluntary axis that both denies and fears agency while constructing ‘the refugee’ as a diminished ‘non-person’. Utilizing drag as an analytical lens sheds fresh light on questions of refugee/migrant agency and performativity as well as (racialized) queer/trans self-enactment and belonging. In this study, refugee/migrant drag artists describe materializing through their drag personas a desired ‘person’ that stakes out spaces of belonging for themselves and for others in their communities. Thus, they push back against dehumanizing social and political forces hostile to their being and belonging.

The dissertation draws on in-depth interviews with twenty-two refugee/migrant drag artist and audience member respondents from across Canada and utilizes an abductive grounded theory approach to analyze the resulting data. The drag artists’ narratives counter Western scripts of ‘refugeeness’ by emphasizing agency and autonomy in their lives long before and after arrival. Through their personas, the work the drag artists do is social, political, and relational. Relationships with their families (of all kinds) and others form a vital part of building collectivity. The sharing of their knowledge and experience with new generations of artists shows how these refugee/migrant drag performers work toward the futures they desire for themselves and others and toward the change they want to see in the world.

Uniquely, this study signals the public pedagogical potential of drag in relation to refuge and migrancy. The study adds to queer/trans migration studies that centre the everyday lived experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ refugees and other migrants before and after conflict/arrival. By focusing on the experiential in and continuity of (queer/trans) refugee/migrant lives, this research contests the reduction of ‘the refugee’ to an anonymous category of diminished ‘non-person’, stripped of a past and refused a future. In demonstrating how (past) social relations nourish present and future belonging for 2SLGBTQ+ refugees and other migrants through collectivity, the study also contributes to the theorizing of queer/trans-of-colour futurity.