OLCreate: Lesson 3.4: Intersectional Inequalities and Uneven Impacts | Borders, legal precarity, and xenophobia

Lesson 3.4: Intersectional Inequalities and Uneven Impacts

View

This lesson analyses how intersecting inequalities intensify vulnerability to ‘anti-gender’ mobilisation. Drawing on intersectionality as both an analytic category and a practical approach, we show how race, migration status, class/economic status, disability, and legal precarity shape exposure to violence and access to safety. It also highlights intersectional forms of resilience and care that arise in response to ‘anti-gender’ violence.

3. Borders, legal precarity, and xenophobia

Migration status also shapes exposure to harm. Asylum and immigration systems often rely on ‘credibility tests’ that force people to perform gender and sexuality according to Western norms; those who do not conform face disbelief or deportation.

Legal insecurity, such as unstable visas, restricted travel, dependency on sponsors - all limit participation in activism and advocacy. Those most affected by repression often become the least visible in transnational spaces.

For queer Belarusians in exile, ‘anti-gender’ hostility in host countries merges with xenophobia: stigmatised both as ‘sexual deviants’ and as ‘unwanted migrants.’ Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian-speaking Belarusians reported being discriminated against in a two-fold way — for being queer and for being associated with an aggressor state.

The examples below show how border regimes and ‘anti-gender’ politics reinforce one another, turning legal insecurity into emotional and social marginalisation. As you watch them, please reflect: How does migration status shape whose stories of gender and sexuality are recognised as ‘credible’?