This anthropological research aims to scrutinize how refugee governance of Turkey polices and controls not only sexuality and gender identity of queer refugees but also sexualized and gendered belongings within a nation-state. Secondly, the research hopes to analyze UNHCR’s role in constructing legal gender classifications by registering and resettling LGBTIQ refugees to a third country. Queer migration literature gathered empirical evidence from countries with centralized asylum application in which UNHCR only plays the role of a mediator. Thus, the literature lacks the effect of UNHCR on establishing LGBTIQ as legal gender classifications. Since asylees can temporarily reside in Turkey (until they are registered and resettled to a third country by UNHCR, Turkey provides a unique opportunity to observe UNHCR’s active role in establishing exclusionary practices of asylum application based on its own perception of gender identities of LGBTIQ.

A full-length study is available here.