Enacting intimate citizenship: the couple migrations of East European queers

Abstract

The topic of how uneven legal recognition for queer couples across international borders relates to migration remains underexplored in the literature. Existing work pays limited attention to how uneven geographical access to LGBTQIA+ family rights may shape mobility patterns and aspirations for queer migrant couples. The article explores these issues in the context of intra-European migration, drawing on research with East Europeans living in Scotland, UK prior to Brexit. It foregrounds the role of migration status and social class in how access to LGBTQIA+ family rights shapes mobility patterns and aspirations. While gaining access to LGBTQIA+ family rights through migration was important for many queer couples, the article argues that migrants’ legal status mediates possibilities for intimate citizenship. Mixed-status couples experienced borders as hard and had to ‘labour to become legal’, while EU migrant couples did not face the same struggles because of their privileged mobility rights. By exploring the experiences of queer migrants from diverse class backgrounds and foregrounding the complexities of class in migration processes, the article also interrogates the association between LGBTQIA+ family rights and class privilege foregrounded in most of the literature on queer couple migration.