Recollections and representations the negotiation of gendered identities and ‘safe spaces’ in the lives of LGBTI refugees in Cape Town, South Africa

In this dissertation, I offer theoretical arguments around sexual rights discourse, homophobia on the African continent and the lived experiences of refugees in Cape Town. I explore the different cultural/discursive, regulatory/institutional and racial/class norms that inform and compel the sexual refugees in this study to conform – or not – to gendered sexual binaries which are socially constructed and produced. I argue that these performances of sexuality are constantly negotiated, justified, and re-normalized within a context of a hegemonic heteronormative spaces of what it means to be male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual, thus shaping the identities and lived experiences of their sexual refugee-hood in Cape Town. I explore the phenomenon of sexual migration to South Africa and question whether the lives of sexual refugees really are better at the end of the “rainbow”.

Publisher: University of Cape Town
Year of Publication: 2012
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