The international conference Queerness and Gender Diversity in/to Migration: Norms, Discourses and Control Mechanisms aims to explore the impact of surveillance on the production of sexualities during migration processes.

The event, organized by the Migrations & Mobilities axis (aMiMo) of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA), will focus on three themes: the exercise of surveillance, circumvention of surveillance, and effects of surveillance.

Scheduled for April 26, 2024, the conference will take place in İstanbul, Türkiye.

8:30 Welcome & registration

9:00 Inaugural speeches

Didem Danış (Université Galatasaray & Association for Migration Research & IFEA, Türkiye)

Öykü Aytaçoğlu (Université Paris 8), Tachfine Baida (Science Po Bordeaux), Marien Gouyon (Université Aix Marseille)

9:15 Panel 1 / Exercise and Perception of Surveillance

Moderator: Jules Falquet (Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, France)

● Affective (homo)Normativity in Queer Asylum Law

Sophia Zisakou (Lund University, Sweden)

● The Other Dimension of Surveillance: The Struggle of LGBTI+ Migrants and Refugees in Removal Centres Across Turkey

Muhammet Ali Keskin (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Türkiye)

●Waiting For My Future: Queer and Trans Encampment in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp

Gabriel/le du Plessis (University of Warwick, UK)

● Discussion

10:30 Coffee break

10:45 Panel 2 / Circumventing Surveillance

Moderator: Sibel Yardımcı (Mimar Sinan Fine Art University, Türkiye)

● Navigating Surveillance in Queer Asylum: Narratives of Resistance in Germany and Denmark

Marie Lunau (Roskilde University, Denmark) & Rieke Schröder (Aalborg University, Denmark)

●Subverting Surveillance: Cruising as Resistance and Self-Expression in the Lives of Queer Migrants in Qatar

Syed Taha Kaleem (Brandeis University, USA)

● Recognizing the Lived Realities and Political Agency of Forced Migrants with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Expressions and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) in Uganda, Lebanon and Türkiye

Zeynep Pınar Erdem & David Onen Ongwech (University of Bremen, Germany)

● “I sucked a lot of dicks to get this place!” Home-making and care practices among LGBTQ refugees in South Africa

John Marnell (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)

● Discussion

12:15 Lunch break

13:30 Panel 3 / Effects of surveillance on trans and queer groups

Moderator: Ahmed Hamila (Université de Montréal, Canada)

●Intimate Re-Materialization of Türkiyeli Trans Subjectivities in Germany

Rabia Aslı Koruyucu (University of Göttingen, Germany)

● Expressions of Freedom in Poetic Narratives of Iranian Queer Migrations

Nilofar Shidmehr (Simon Fraser University & University of British Columbia, Canada)

●Against Hierarchies of Deservingness: Queering Transnational (Im)Mobilities

Mert Koçak (University of Cologne, Germany)

● Lūbya mṛa wəlla Tṛãnṣiya, about the identity shifts induced and/or forced by the migrations of gender minorities from the South to the West

Massinissa Garaoun (INALCO &; EPHA & Languages and cultures of Africa, France) & Malek Cheikh (AssiégéEs magazine, France)

● Discussion

15:00 Coffee break

15:30 Screening of the movie CAER directed by Nicola Mai (University of Leicester, UK)

17:00 - 19h

Roundtable

Reframing Queer and Trans Mobilities from the Global South

Moderator: Doğu Durgun (Kadir Has University, Türkiye)

• B Camminga (Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI), Germany, African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, South Africa)
  

• John Marnell (Wits University, South Africa)

• Nicola Mai (University of Leicester, UK).
  

CAER is the result of the collaboration between Nicola Mai and the Transgrediendo Intercultural Collective, an association defending the rights of trans latina migrant women in Queens, New York City. CAER was screened at the Outfest Fusion LGBTQ People of Color Film Festival 2021; the Sheffield DocFest 2021 (UK competition); the Vancouver Queer Film Festival 2021, and the Newfest LGBTQ+ NYC Film Festival 2021. It was awarded a special mention at the 2021 AL BORDE Festival Internacional de Cine Transfeminista and won the 2021 International Trans Film Festival Divergenti in Italy.

For further information:​​ https://caer-film.org/

The round table will also focus on the book co-edited by B Camminga and John Marnell and entitled Queer and Trans African Mobilities. Migration, Asylum and Diaspora (2022). Queer and Trans African Mobilities draws on diverse case studies from the length and breadth of Africa, offering the first in-depth investigation of LGBT migration on and from the continent. The collection provides new insights into the drivers and impacts of displacement linked to sexual orientation or gender identity and challenges notions about why LGBT Africans move, where they are going and what they experience along the way.

For further information: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/queer-and-trans-african-mobilities-9780755638994/

Chadia Arab, Université d’Angers, France

Barbara Bompani, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

B Camminga, ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Germany, African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Jules Falquet, Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis, France

Jane Freedman, Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis, France

Monia Lachheb, Université de la Manouba, Tunisia

Nicola Mai, University of Leicester, United Kingdom

John Marnell, African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Nasima Moujoud, Université Pierre-Mendès, France

Sima Shakhsari, University of Minnesota, The United States of America

Aslı Zengin, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, The United States of America

Öykü Aytaçoğlu is a PhD candidate in gender studies at the Department of Sociology, at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. She is affiliated to the Center for Sociological and Political Research in Paris (CRESPPA), to the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology (IDEAS) in Aix-en-Provence, and to the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul. She holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Galatasaray, a research master's degree in sociology and a professional master's degree in European studies from the University of Aix-Marseille. Her first thesis focused on the careers of Syrian students in exile in France, and the second on queer refugees in the European Union. Her dissertation examines the socio-legal violence faced by queer people in exile in İstanbul, while addressing the potential of urban spaces to counteract power relations. Her publications include a chapter published in the edited volume entitled “The Gender of Borders. Embodies Narratives of Migration, Violence and Agency” (2023), and another in the book entitled “Terrains sensibles au Maghreb et au-delà. Acteurs, chercheurs et affect” (2022).

Tachfine Baida is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Laboratory Les Afriques du Mondes (LAM) at Sciences Po Bordeaux. He works on issues of sexual diversity and gender identity in the law of Maghreb states. He previously worked for four years as a human rights expert supporting political dialogue at the Belgian Development Agency (Enabel) in Morocco. Prior to this, he was project coordinator at the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and program assistant at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Morocco. In terms of his academic background, Baida obtained a Master's degree in Human Rights from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. He had previously obtained a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and a Master's degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. He also spent part of his studies at George Washington University in the USA and Scuola superiore Sant'Anna in Italy. His fields of interest include human rights, gender studies and postcolonial studies in North Africa.

Marien Gouyon obtained his PhD in social anthropology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in 2015. His dissertation is entitled “Ana loubia. Ethnographie des homosexualités masculines à Casablanca”. It was published in 2018 by Éditions du Croquant. He is currently working about the migration paths of homosexual men in Dubai and Morocco.