Migrant, migratised and racialised bi+ people face compounded forms of oppression and erasure at the hands of a deeply anti-migrant, racist and biphobic society. 

As part of our #WhoIsWelcome campaign, we have released a zine co-authored with Aine Bennett, exploring the often sidelined experience of bi+ people in the immigration and asylum systems, as well as their encounters with borders in every day life. 

The Home Office’s disbelief culture reinforces an almost insurmountable burden of proof on bi+ migrants, especially those from non-Western cultures, and expects them to conform to Western conceptions of queerness in order to access protection. Bi+ people seeking asylum are stereotyped by decision makers as being deceitful, untruthful, unreliable, promiscuous, and lacking credibility. Many have been told by decision makers to “go home” and only act on their “straight” attractions, or have been mistakenly identified as “gay” or “straight”. Bi+ people in the asylum system have also been accused of being “fake” by lesbian and gay activists. 

Biphobia can also be understood as a lasting legacy of colonialism, and its erasure of fluid sexualities. The UK asylum system’s policing and gatekeeping of queerness therefore serves as an extension of colonial-era dismissal and erasure of non-Western cultures: it is a colonial deployment of queerness. 

In their origin country, colonised bi+ people are subjected to erasure and oppression, often due to colonial-era homophobic laws and attitudes. Upon arriving to their destination country, they encounter stereotypes about how their race should intersect with their queerness, or are seen to be inauthentically queer due to certain culturally or religiously informed behaviours surrounding modesty, visibility, party culture, and coming out. Migratised bisexual+ men (such as Black men or men of Colour) are also often fetishised by White gay communities, as both their bisexuality and their race is exoticised and sexualised. 

Heightened visibility is not the antidote to persecution. Only the dismantling of oppressive systems will create a world where migrants, bisexual people and those at the intersections of queerphobia, biphobia and bordering, are treated with dignity and respect.

Zine

To read the zine in full, click here.