Crafting a queer migrant community. NGOs personnel's positioning in the “Samos LGBTQI+ Support Group”

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to analyse micropolitical dynamics activated in queer migrant people mutual-support groups run by NGOs. In particular, this article examines how humanitarian personnel picture, organise and experience LGBTQI+ migrant collectives. The selected fieldwork is the Samos LGBTQI+ collective as, in 2021, the first Closed Control Access Centre was inaugurated on the island. The centre is part of the identification and surveillance facilities located in the Aegean Sea. Such institutions are the cornerstone of the European Union’s migrant fluxes management strategy articulated in The New Pact on Migration and Asylum (COM - 609/2020). This article then examines humanitarian personnel’s perspective investigating “safe space”’s management, as well as the intersectional dynamics of power which characterise its gatherings, the very definition of queer community and group’s relationship with migration regime’s authorities.

Keywords

• queer
• migration
• ngo