Intersecting queer rights and immigration rights

ChavezF13How are queerness and immigration linked?

Karma R. Chávez, author of Queer Migration Politics:  Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, sees many commonalities and barriers for activists in both these communities.

“One of the things you really see over the last twenty years is a focus on issues that don’t really challenge the structures of the U.S. nation state, for example, but that sort of just ask to belong into it,” Chávez says. “You have to fashion yourself in such a way so that the system will find you acceptable.”

On the Fembot Collective’s Books Aren’t Dead podcast Chávez says that living in the Southwest 2003 to 2008 prompted her interest in linking her scholarship and activism.

“You can’t live in Arizona and not be be really compelled by the need to be an immigration advocate or activist,” Chávez tells Magie Ramírez.


About michael

Marketing & Sales Manager since 2012