Lesson 4.3: Care & Survival in Exile

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This topic explores aspects of survival and political resistance that are often intangible—emotional support, informal care, and everyday acts of solidarity—but we will anchor these in concrete examples to try and grasp them. We learn how care, friendship, and solidarity networks sustain life in exile and become the infrastructure of political agency. In contexts where institutions fail, these acts of mutual support are not simply emotional responses - they are political practices that make survival possible.

3. Inequalities in Solidarity Networks

Care networks sustain life, yet they also mirror wider inequalities. Race, class, whiteness, citizenship, economic barriers, ableism, and gender identity shape who belongs — and who remains peripheral. EXIFG3.4, a trans refugee in Switzerland, described being excluded from Pride decision-making due to membership fees:

 
I couldn’t vote […] I can’t pay this [250 francs] […]I was faced with the whiteness of Europe. (Exile Report, p. 14)

Similarly, Bawer found mainstream Pride events in Spain dominated by white, cis, European concerns, leading him to join migrant-led groups where solidarity felt grounded and mutual.

 
How is it that there are so many immigrants, but there is so much cis gay and lesbian-centred and white European-centred thinking [...] I said, ‘I can’t do anything with them’. Then I found migrant LGBTQIA+ people, you know, not specific organisations but groups, for example, I stopped going to the mainstream Pride march. I go to the march organised by migrants, the places where I socialise are usually migrant, LGBTQIA+ rights, where they go, there is an LGBTQIA+ refugee organisation there. (Exile Report, pp. 14-15)

In Germany, EXIINT05 described being told that, as an immigrant, he had ‘no right’ to critique mainstream queer politics — revealing how whiteness and national entitlement remain unspoken norms even within spaces that present themselves as inclusive.

 
The criticisms I have made since I came to Germany, when I criticised what I saw and experienced, I was told that I had no right to do this as an immigrant, by white mainstream and immigrant-friendly people. (Exile Report, EXIINT05, p. 15)
Nandita Sharma (2006) describes this dynamic as a form of managed inclusion, in which migrants may be welcomed as beneficiaries of protection or tolerance but are denied full political voice and legitimacy as critics. Belonging is conditional, and political agency remains tied to citizenship, whiteness, and national authority.

Belarusian participants similarly reported gendered and sexual hierarchies within opposition networks. Some conservative male leaders promoted openly misogynistic or homophobic views, even in exile, while women noted the persistence of masculine-coded language and leadership styles in campaign materials.

Together, these examples illustrate what Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003) argues: solidarity must be critical and attentive to power relations, rather than assumed as a natural or automatic unity.
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