ABSTRACT
The migrants who experience the asylum determination process must provide their own accounts of how they understand their sexual orientations and gender identities. Asylum decision-makers and immigration judges seem to resolutely look for coherence between an asylum seeker's sexual orientation and gender expression when assessing their sincerity. This chapter explores how one can claim asylum as a sexual minority or gender non-conforming person in the UK. Importantly, gender identity is the category through which trans migrants can apply for asylum. Over the past two decades, the development of the rights agenda for gender and sexual minorities has served as a reminder for those in the Global North that these rights are not present everywhere in the world. The concepts of sexual citizenship and sexual democracy have been important to analyze the developments of gender and sexual minorities' rights as well as the changes in their public position vis-a-vis state institutions and the moral landscape of neoliberal societies.
