We Have Always Been a Part of It: Centring the Transformative Potential of SOGIE Claimants' Narratives in Canada

SOGIE refugee scholarship examines intersecting power relations, including race, ethnicity, gender, class, citizenship, and geopolitical location. A key intersection is how SOGIE claimants navigate the homonationalist apparatus of the Canadian refugee system, which constructs the identity category of an "authentic" SOGIE refugee as characterized by pure victimhood and passivity, based on a Western-exceptionalist notion of sexuality. Through a comprehensive literature review and Thematic Analysis of 30 publicly available SOGIE refugee decisions in Canada, this study identifies three primary assumptions about the "authentic" SOGIE refugee claimant: the Public/Private Discourse of LGBT Rights, the Linear, Progressive Narrative of SOGIE, and the Homocolonial Inclusion of LGBT Rights. Recognizing the limitations of "adaptive agency," this analysis centers the transformative potential of SOGIE refugee claimants' narratives in interrogating these assumptions through their "discursive agency," transcending the limitations of liberal notions of agency that operate within a dichotomy of resistance and compliance.