Queer Necropolitics: Experiences of LGBTQI+ Asylum Claimants During Covid-19 in the UK

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how the Covid-19 pandemic has the potential to exacerbate inequalities and social isolation through the analytical lens of Mbembe's necropolitics. To this end, the article examines the UK Government approach to providing LGBTQI+ asylum claimants' access to safe accommodation and health service. The analysis shows that the Home Office's policies around housing and health during the Covid-19 pandemic is closely linked to 'hostile environment' policies -amplifying housing and food precarity, isolation, exposure to violence, economic insecurity as well as physical and mental health problems for LGBTQI+ asylum claimants. The claim is made that there is a lack of intersectionality in the governmental approach to refugees and Covid-19 which creates a support gap for particularly LGBTQI+ asylum claimants. The data used for the writing of this article is based on 14 semi-structured interviews conducted between August 2020 and April 2021 with social/charity workers, asylum claimants and refugees affiliated with NGO help organisations in Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff, Brighton, Belfast, and London.