Overview

Bringing together diverse case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, this open access collection serves as the first in-depth examination of queer and trans displacement in East Africa. The collection features original creative works by queer and trans diasporic writers and artists with first-hand experiences of displacement. The last decade has seen a sharp rise in state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in East Africa. This includes discriminatory legislation, such as the widely condemned Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda, and government-initiated crackdowns, such as the ‘anti-gay taskforce’ launched in Tanzania in 2018. The politicisation of sexual and gender rights in the region is often presented as a moral crusade (i.e. a return to traditional/family values) and is enacted with the support of many religious and cultural leaders. It is within this context that an ever-increasing number of LGBTQI+ people are leaving their homes and seeking protection elsewhere. But East Africa cannot be reduced to a site from which LGBTQI+ displacement emanates. Several countries in the region act as either host countries or transit points, even as they produce LGBTQI+ refugees of their own. These complex social, political and legal dynamics make East Africa a productive site for theorising queer and trans displacement. The region offers insights into how, when and why LGBTQI+ Africans move, the social obstacles they face, and the different survival strategies they deploy. Despite this, research on East African queer and trans displacements remains sparse. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Full Product Details

Author:   John Marnell (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa) ,  B Camminga (University of Bristol, UK) ,  Barbara Bompani (University of Parma, Italy) ,  Kamau Wairuri (Edinburgh Napier University, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.460kg
ISBN:  

9781350422025

ISBN 10:   1350422029
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   05 February 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Introduction (co-editors) LGBTQ+ displacement as lived experience 1. Hope and futurity of queer migrants in Kampala, Uganda (Austin Bryan, Northwestern University, USA) 2. Homemaking, belonging and domestic aspirations in the lives of LGBTQ refugees (John Marnell, African Centre for Migration and Society, South Africa) 3. Embodied religion: Faith and religious experience in the everyday life of LGBTQ+ displaced people in Nairobi (Barbara Bompani, University of Edinburgh, UK, and Wits University, South Africa) 4. Climate change, Covid-19 and LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda: Experiences, impacts and knowledges (Neil J. W. Wilson, University of Leeds, UK, Nath Niyitegeka, Rainbow Heritage Initiative Uganda, and Katie McQuaid, University of Leeds, UK) Different ways of thinking, doing and reading LGBTQ+ displacement (e.g. theoretical, conceptual and methodological innovations) 5. Deception and evidence for Queer exodus from Uganda: Reflexive biographicalethnography (Stella Nyanzi, Makerere University, Uganda) 6. When homonationalism and homophobia meet: Transgender refugees, the discretion principle and Kenya’s parallel legal regimes (B Camminga, Wits University, South Africa) 7. Relocating the subject in queer theory: A defence of identity through the stories of LGBTQ+ forced migrants in Nairobi (Brian Oosthuizen, University of Oxford, UK) 8. Gathering an LGBTI+ refugee legal archive (Miriam Gleckman-Krut, University of Michigan, USA) Political and legal perspectives on LGBTQ+ displacement 9. The externalisation of borders and barbarism: Rwanda and the return of the LGBTQI+ question (B Camminga, John Marnell and Emmanuel Munyarukumbuzi, African Leadership University, Rwanda) 10. Embodiment, persecution, resistance and displacement: Legal and ethical dilemmas for LGBTQI+ queer migrants in and from East Africa (Noah Mirembe Gabigogo, Uganda Law Society and East Africa Law Society) 11. State policing of queer and trans refugees in Kenya (Kamau Wairuri, Edinburgh Napier University, UK) 12. Queering protection of East Africans during transit and forced migration: Do existent laws holistically protect LGBTQ people from torture? (Edward Mutebi, Alice-Salomon University Berlin, Germany, and Stella Nyanzi)

Reviews

East African Queer and Trans Displacements offers a critical and accessible analysis of international refugee policies when they confront national laws, regional transnational relationships, Christian fundamentalism, and climate change. Through an intimate portrait of asylum seekers’ lives, the book invites scholars and practitioners to expand their scope of analysis and develop new and better supportive strategies for LGBTQI Africans. * Anima Adjepong, University of Cincinnati, USA * East African Queer and Trans Displacements is not just rigorous scholarship – it is testimony, archive, and act of resistance. This volume offers empirically rich analyses on displacement, belonging, protection, and everyday lives in exile, centering lived experiences of queer and trans people. At a time of increasingly dangerous conditions, this powerful book is an urgent and necessary contribution. * Ulrike Krause, University of Münster, Germany * Traversing the local to the national and the global, much like the journeying people whose stories are told within its pages, East African Queer and Trans Displacements capaciously and ambitiously fills a void in the scholarship on African migrations. By spotlighting the East African subregion, this methodologically diverse and theoretically illuminating book avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralization, while fulfilling the promise of specificity. It provides us the benefit of nuanced and highly contextualized dynamics of queer migration, teaching us larger lessons about displacement, emplacement, borders, identities, home, and the African condition. * Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Brandeis University, USA * East African Queer and Trans Displacements is an insightful testament to the resilience, creativity, and imagination of those who live at the margins of nationhood, gender, and belonging. Through personal narratives, incisive analysis, and creative writing, this book documents how queer and trans persons navigate displacement not only geographically, but socially and spiritually. Doing so, it offers a compelling portrait of queer fugitivity, not merely as a condition of exile but as a mode of being that resists erasure and asserts life beyond normative borders. * Adriaan van Klinken, University of Leeds, UK * This volume is nothing short of brilliant. It makes canonical contributions to the emergent field of the study of queer and trans displacement specifically, but also to broader multidisciplinary efforts seeking to sharpen scholarly conceptualization of displacement, its governance and its resistance. The volume illuminates the conditions of LGBTQI displacement and does so with close attention to the worldmaking agency of queer and trans refugees under conditions often tailored to erase their existence. Its contributions are many—challenging conventional portrayals, while nuancing the conceptualization of displacement, including to accommodate different practices of self-identification of those forcibly moved or immobilized. This is essential reading for anyone grappling with the meaning and reality of international borders and migration because of how it carefully maps the different ways of knowing, wielding and contesting borders among queer and trans displaced persons and communities in East Africa. * E. Tendayi Achiume, Stanford University, USA, and University of Pretoria, South Africa *

East African Queer and Trans Displacements offers a critical and accessible analysis of international refugee policies when they confront national laws, regional transnational relationships, Christian fundamentalism, and climate change. Through an intimate portrait of asylum seekers’ lives, the book invites scholars and practitioners to expand their scope of analysis and develop new and better supportive strategies for LGBTQI Africans. * Anima Adjepong, University of Cincinnati, USA *

Author Information

Barbara Bompani is a Reader in Africa and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is the co-editor of two collections including Christian Citizens and the Moral Regeneration of the African State (2017). B Camminga (they/she) is a Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender at the University of Bristol, UK and a Research Associate at the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand, SA. John Marnell (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the African Center for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is co-editor of Queer and Trans African Mobilities: Migration, Asylum and Diaspora (ZED, 2021). Kamau Wairuri is a Lecturer in Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University, UK. He is interested in the ways that social order is imagined, produced, and maintained in Africa, with a focus on the politics of criminal justice on the continent.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions