Performing for Their Lives: The Psychological Toll of ‘Reverse Covering' for Sexual and Gender Minority Refugee Claimants in Canada

Background: For sexual and gender minorities (SGM) facing state-sponsored and community violence in their countries of origin, concealing one’s sexual and gender identity may be necessary for survival. However, to gain asylum in a host country, SGM migrants often must reverse cover (Yoshino, 2002), which may entail coming out before they are ready. Despite the documented rise in SGM migrants fleeing to Western countries, the psychological consequences of reverse covering are little understood. This study aimed to explore the experiences of reverse covering for SGM migrants seeking refugee status in Canada through the perspectives of refugee service providers and SGM forced migrants.      

Methods: Twenty-nine in-depth interviews ranging from 120 to 150 minutes each were conducted with community-based service providers (n = 22) serving SGM asylum-seekers and migrants gaining refugee status in Canada as a sexual or gender minority (n = 7).  Service providers represented an array of disciplines: legal providers (n = 5), mental health professionals (n = 4), advocates (n = 6), settlement workers (n = 5), and private sponsors (n = 2). SGM migrants identified as gay (n = 4), lesbian (n = 2), or transgender (n= 1) and were from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Iran, Lebanon, the Arab peninsula, or Ghana. Participants were recruited via email fliers sent through various listservs and community organizations. Interviews aimed to elicit participants’ observations and experiences of pursuing a refugee claim, including the process of providing evidence to demonstrate persecution on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  Interviews were transcribed verbatim from audio recordings and analyzed according to constructivist grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2006). Strategies for rigor included peer co-coding and debriefing, negative case analysis, member checking, and keeping an audit trail (Padgett 2008).

Results: The study’s emergent themes were: “proving gay”; creating crisis; assessing the damage; and healing in community. Moreover, service providers acknowledged that they pressured their SGM clients to engage in behaviors that would demonstrate their affiliation with Canadian constructs of SGM categories despite negative emotional consequences for clients who may never have identified with such categories. Participants reported that the refugee claims process “forced” coming out in a quasi-judicial setting under short timelines, leading to identity and mental health crises that could persist after the claim had been granted. To heal, some SGM refugees needed to take steps to regain a sense of autonomy and connect with a supportive community network.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings elucidate that reverse covering may contribute to psychological harm for SGM claimants. Furthermore, service providers may actually play a role in perpetuating this harm. Rather than force SGM claimants to come out and adopt behaviors considered normative for Western SGM persons, service providers and adjudicators should strive to better understand how claimants experienced their sexual and/or gender “differentness” in their country of origin. Social workers must work with refugee policy makers to help illuminate the complexities of sexual and gender identity expressions across cultures. Moreover, they can support SGM forced migrants as they navigate the claims process and its aftermath.