This panel discusses findings from an Icelandic research project on the social experiences of people who flee persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression (SOGIE) to Northern Europe and the Netherlands, both hailed for queer exceptionalism. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the presenters discuss how SOGIE refugees navigate conflicting legal, social, and cultural discourses on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in Iceland and the Netherlands with some being deported back to Italy and Greece.

Employing theoretical perspectives of transnationalism, homonationalism, post-colonialism, bordering, critical race theory, and queer
of color critique, the panel argues that the transmigration of queerness potentially entails juggling different sexual and gender identities that afford different kinds of privileges and opportunities in different national and social contexts.

Panelists

Linda Sólveigar is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Iceland and a researcher in the project Queer Refugees in Queer Utopias: Inclusions and Exclusions.

Dr.Árdís K. Ingvars is a lecturer in Disability Studies and Sociology at the University of Iceland.

Dr.Guðbjörg Ottósdóttir is a cis lesbian and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Iceland.

Dr. Maja Hertoghs is an Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.