The Loving Queer Migrant - Negotiating Emotions, Couples and Closeness in French Migration Control

This article investigates the role of emotions in queer migrations through centering how dominant narratives of love and coupledom circulate and become productive in sexual minority migration in France. Building primarily on queer/family migration-and affect theory in relation to race- and mobility (cf. Ahmed, 2000; Autumn-White, 2014; D’Aoust, 2014), the article argues that emotions- and emotional narratives of self/love are communal and productive ways of establishing truths about (sexual) subjectivities at the hands of French migration authorities. More specifically, expressions of “proper” love- and coupledom function as technologies of establishing “authentic” sexual subjectivities- and “authentic” coupledom for queer asylum seekers seeking to legalize/regularize their presence in France (before OFPRA, CNDA and local administration). Building on interviews, written (published) material by the organization, alongside ethnographic data collected throughout 2021, the article zeroes in on how emotional narratives become productive in work of ARDHIS, one of France’s oldest LGBTIQ+ migration associations. ARDHIS has two decades of experience in preparing asylum seekers- and couples for encounters with French migration authorities. Their work thereby serves as an important ground of negotiation for how racialized state categories of deserving/undeserving migrants are embedded in discourses on authentic love, coupledom and family, and how these categories impact the migration trajectories for (some) queer migrants- and couples (cf. Andrikopoulos, 2019; Chauvin et al. 2019; Fassin & Salcedo, 2015).