Becoming a "Refugee": Lived Experience of Russian-Speaking LGB Asylum-Seekers

Background and Purpose: The emerging research on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) asylum-seekers highlights the unique challenges this invisible population faces including dangers of deportation, ambivalence about revealing the extremely personal accounts of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) status, limited access to services and supports due to the legal status and discrimination by institutions and service providers, homophobia and transphobia inside and outside immigrant communities, absence of family support, and absence of public or private funding for services for asylum-seekers. While the research on the challenges and policy responses is rapidly advancing in Europe and elsewhere, little is known about the experiences of LGB asylum-seekers in the U.S. This study aims to illuminate lived experience of a new population of Russian-speaking LGB asylum-seekers, who have been arriving in substantial numbers in the last five years since the adoption of the so-called “gay propaganda ban” laws in 2013 in Russia, and associated waves of physical attacks and kidnappings of LGB persons across Russia, and the revival of the criminal persecution according to longstanding but dormant laws against LGBT persons in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Methods: Eleven in-depth interviews were conducted with Russian-speaking LGB asylum-seekers and asylees (ages 25 to 35) residing in NYC, San Francisco, Berlin and Beersheba.  The sample is predominantly male (ten identify as men; two as women), of various ethnicities.  Field observations of the public events in the community such as the Brighton Beach Pride were also conducted. Purposive sampling procedures led to recruiting most participants from an informal LGB self-help group. Interpretive phenomenological data analysis of themes was used to uncover lived experiences of participants through their life stories shared during the in-depth interviews. Intersectionality and minority stress theories informed the thematic analysis.  

Findings: The major theme of the discordance between inner and outer narratives adds to the other common stressors of asylum-seekers. Specifically, the inner narrative’s themes include: (1) not identifying themselves as “refugees”, (2) relief of finding a community, (3) struggling with coming-out stress, (4) guilt and uncertainly about a decision to claim asylum, (5) activism as way of coping, while outer narrative includes an interconnected theme of (6) defining sexual orientation using the homonormative language for Western service providers as well for asylum and immigration officers and performing these new identities while waiting for asylum hearings. Other challenges shared by most participants are: a need for good English as a prerequisite for accessing established services, age and integration: younger asylum-seekers speak some English, digital natives, while older ones feel left behind; ethnicity and race: Russian-speakers include individuals from Central Asia and the Caucasus, former ethnic minorities becoming majority in the community.

Conclusion and Implications: Exploration of lived experience of the new population of Russian-speaking LGB asylum-seekers provides insights for further needed research and policy responses, specifically related to the within-group diversity, between-county policies, challenges in connecting immigration and LGB rights through intersectional activism, and issues of homophobia inside immigrant enclaves where new LGB asylum-seekers are forced to settle due to limited English.