ABSTRACT
Drawing on the experience of Russian-speaking queer migrants in Berlin, the chapter furthers our understanding of queer migration by analysing the motivations and integration strategies of LGBQ migrants as well as their attempts to maintain and perform both their sexual and national identities in the post-migration context. The risk that they could be doubly marginalised – as ethnic minorities within the host society and sexual minorities in the established diasporic community – led to the establishment of Quarteera, a forum for Russian-speaking queers to perform and maintain both their sexual and ethno-cultural identities and give and receive social and psychological support as well as a channel for expressing feelings of solidarity towards other Russian-speaking queers in the post-Soviet homeland. A further contribution of the article is thus highlighting the benefit of ‘queer diaspora’ as a heuristic device to think about identity, belonging and solidarity among sexual minorities in the context of dispersal and transnational networks.
