“Were in this Together” - NGO Advocacy and LGBTQ+ Asylum Claimants: Intimate/Care Citizenship as Co- Presence and Imagined Equality.

Abstract

This paper explores the work of regional NGO organisations in the UK that explicitly support LGBTQ+ asylum claimants, framing the testimonials of both service providers and service users, in considering issues of co-presence, and imagined equality, that may be experienced between the parties. While framing the cultural and political environment at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, and critiquing citizenship as a purely hegemonic nationalistic concept by drawing from theories of “intimate citizenship” (Plummer, 1995) and “Care-tizenship” (Casas-Cortes, 2019), this paper considers the dynamics of collective advocacy. Offering an intersectional approach that frames issues of sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, religion and regionality, the authors consider the significance of co-presence, offering a hybrid mode of citizenship that frames the optimistic sense of equality afforded when LGBTQ+ service users support LGBTQ+ asylum claimants.