East African Queer and Trans Displacements
Barbara Bompani editor B Camminga editor John Marnell editor Kamau Wairuri editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:5th Feb '26
£21.99
This title is due to be published on 5th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Bringing together diverse case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, this open access collection serves as the first in-depth examination of queer and trans displacement in East Africa. The collection features original creative works by queer and trans diasporic writers and artists with first-hand experiences of displacement.
The last decade has seen a sharp rise in state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in East Africa.
This includes discriminatory legislation, such as the widely condemned Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda, and government-initiated crackdowns, such as the ‘anti-gay taskforce’ launched in Tanzania in 2018. The politicisation of sexual and gender rights in the region is often presented as a moral crusade (i.e. a return to traditional/family values) and is enacted with the support of many religious and cultural leaders. It is within this context that an ever-increasing number of LGBTQI+ people are leaving their homes and seeking protection elsewhere.
But East Africa cannot be reduced to a site from which LGBTQI+ displacement emanates. Several countries in the region act as either host countries or transit points, even as they produce LGBTQI+ refugees of their own. These complex social, political and legal dynamics make East Africa a productive site for theorising queer and trans displacement. The region offers insights into how, when and why LGBTQI+ Africans move, the social obstacles they face, and the different survival strategies they deploy. Despite this, research on East African queer and trans displacements remains sparse.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.
East African Queer and Trans Displacements offers a critical and accessible analysis of international refugee policies when they confront national laws, regional transnational relationships, Christian fundamentalism, and climate change. Through an intimate portrait of asylum seekers’ lives, the book invites scholars and practitioners to expand their scope of analysis and develop new and better supportive strategies for LGBTQI Africans. * Anima Adjepong, University of Cincinnati, USA *
East African Queer and Trans Displacements is not just rigorous scholarship – it is testimony, archive, and act of resistance. This volume offers empirically rich analyses on displacement, belonging, protection, and everyday lives in exile, centering lived experiences of queer and trans people. At a time of increasingly dangerous conditions, this powerful book is an urgent and necessary contribution. * Ulrike Krause, University of Münster, Germany *
Traversing the local to the national and the global, much like the journeying people whose stories are told within its pages, East African Queer and Trans Displacements capaciously and ambitiously fills a void in the scholarship on African migrations. By spotlighting the East African subregion, this methodologically diverse and theoretically illuminating book avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralization, while fulfilling the promise of specificity. It provides us the benefit of nuanced and highly contextualized dynamics of queer migration, teaching us larger lessons about displacement, emplacement, borders, identities, home, and the African condition. * Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Brandeis University, USA *
East African Queer and Trans Displacements is an insightful testament to the resilience, creativity, and imagination of those who live at the margins of nationhood, gender, and belonging. Through personal narratives, incisive analysis, and creative writing, this book documents how queer and trans persons navigate displacement not only geographically, but socially and spiritually. Doing so, it offers a compelling portrait of queer fugitivity, not merely as a condition of exile but as a mode of being that resists erasure and asserts life beyond normative borders. * Adriaan van Klinken, University of Leeds, UK *
ISBN: 9781350422025
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages