These figures are cast as ‘homosexual warriors’, the vanguards for today’s sexual freedoms in Europe and North America. Auden, whose writing reflects a perpetual sense of homelessness, of feeling out-of-place, only to find brief refuge in the city, in defiance of the coming Nazi storm. Most famously, Weimar Berlin welcomed Christopher Isherwood and W. Almost a century ago, the city became home to a large number of homosexual exiles in search of sanctuary and sexual liberation. How has this history been remembered and called upon in attempts to understand present day sexual minority displacement?īerlin, home to some 3,500 sexual minority refugees fleeing the crisis in Syria today, has revived its role as a haven for displaced queers. However, the history of sexual exile, of displacement and of being out-of-place because of sexuality, has a long history, particularly in Germany: Weimar Berlin became home to thousands of people seeking sanctuary and sexual liberation from the prudish and homophobic values of their home countries. What can history tell us about sexuality and asylum seeking? At a time when LGBTQI refugees have become an increasingly prominent feature of public and political debates about the ‘Refugee Crisis’, we might be left to conclude that ‘sexual refugees’ are a comparatively ‘modern’ phenomenon. Joy Damousi, Filippo Nelli, Anh Nguyen Austen, Alessandro Toffoli & Mary Tomsic BCA’37 UK - The Association for the UK Basque Children.Ĭlaire Eldridge, Christoph Kalter, and Becky TaylorĮlena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & Yousif M.
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