This book analyses fifteen years of debate, media narrative, policy documents and artistic production to uncover the way sexual citizenship is reshaped by LGBT asylum.

Asylum discourses, with their many harrowing stories, have proved a powerful platform for discussion of the sexual rights of those who are not citizens. The forces involved, from the state to LGBT or asylum activists, compete with each other for the redefinition of what progressive sexual politics should be.

This book assesses the consequences of persisting colonial imaginaries on the representation of sexual freedom, as well as of the neoliberal management of asylum for LGBT asylum seekers. The book explores the contradictory role of political emotions such as sympathy, which constitutes both a basis for solidarity and a means of dispossessing claimants of their agency, and finally discusses how optimism can be queered in asylum discourses.