Theoretical reflections

assessing how well a client’s story will fit into the IND’s demands for a credible narrative and shaping the narrative to fit these expectations. They shape the narrative by eliciting relevant information, (re)structuring the story, and by practicing with the client how to narrate their experiences.

enough to constitute a ‘credible’ refugee story. Asylum seekers can become reliant on legal aid providers to help them ‘pass’ the asylum procedure.

I found that through questions, instructions, and feedback, NGO workers helped an

applicant shape their narratives into both the ‘Western’ narrative format and the narrative format required in the legal-institutional context of the asylum procedure. In line with Smith-Khan (2019), my data indicates that rather than being the ‘real’ story of which applicants are the sole authors, asylum narratives are actively constructed and context-dependent (see also Holland, 2018). Similar to Jacobs and Maryns (2021), my research demonstrates how legal aid providers use their

knowledge about the legal-institutional requirements of a credible asylum narrative to shape the experiential, fragmented, life-as-lived stories of applicants into a ‘life-as-told’ narrative that will be perceived as ‘credible’ in the asylum procedure (see also Eastmond, 2007). The final narrative that a client will present at the IND becomes a co-constructed product born out of the collaboration between the applicant and the NGO worker.

7.3.2 Mediator role

I found that NGO workers play a ‘mediator’ role, as they are positioned in between an applicant’s ‘lifeworld’ (Jacobs & Maryns, 2021, p.22) and the legal-institutional context of the asylum procedure. This in-between position allows them to ‘translate’ a client’s story from lived experiences into a narrative that is ‘credible’ in the legal-institutional context. In my research, I also found that NGO workers play a ‘mediator’ role by looking out for the psychological and physical well-being of their clients and building a trust bond with them, which makes clients feel

comfortable to discuss personal experiences. At the same time, NGO workers assess the client’s narrative in a similar way as the IND does, by looking at inconsistencies or incoherence. They use their knowledge of the IND’s narrative demands to instruct their clients on how to tell their stories, to ask further questions, or to provide (critical) feedback on inconsistencies.

The NGO workers evaluate when a client’s story is strong enough to potentially ‘pass’ the IND hearing. Smith-Khan (2020) and Jacobs and Maryns (2021) define lawyers’ assessments of clients’ credibility as ‘gatekeeping’ for the asylum procedure, as they evaluate clients’ narratives using the credibility assessment frameworks of the decision-maker (Jacobs & Maryns, 2021; Smith-Khan, 2020). The authors describe a tension between lawyers, on the one hand, ‘building rapport’

and ‘supporting’ a client, and on the other hand, acting as ‘gatekeepers.’ They see this tension as inherent in the mediator role that lawyers play (ibid.). My findings demonstrate that this mediator role and ‘gatekeeping’ is not just done by lawyers but can also be taken up by NGO workers, as they

use the IND’s requirements to assess the credibility of a client’s story, but for the purpose of helping a client ‘pass’ the IND hearing.

In my research, I found that NGO workers navigate the tension between the ‘supporting’

role and the ‘gatekeeping’ role by emphasizing to the client that they provide critical feedback only to prepare clients for the IND interview, distancing themselves from the criticisms they provide to protect their trust bond with the client. Similarly, Smith-Khan (2020) found that asylum lawyers framed their concerns about a client’s story as wanting to help them prevent issues in the actual asylum hearing. I found that NGO workers distance themselves from the IND’s demands to protect their trust bond with the client. NGO workers thus engage in a ‘mediator’ role as they move in-between the legal-institutional context in which clients must present their narratives according to the IND’s formats, and clients’ ‘lifeworld’ in which they have experiences and relationships.

7.3.3 Making ‘readable’

Lastly, I argue that NGO workers’ ‘translate’ and ‘co-create’ clients’ narratives with the aim to make the client’s LGBTI(Q+) identity ‘readable’ for the IND. The IND’s normative ideas about

‘real’ refugees and LGBTI(Q+) people can mean that people who fall outside of these norms struggle to be recognized as a ‘real’ LGBTI(Q+) refugee. This finding is in line with Brennan (2016), Lewis (2013), and Perego (2017), who all describe how images of how ‘real’ refugees and ‘real’ LGBTI(Q+) people can render those who do not fit into those norms ‘unintelligible’ for decision-makers. In my thesis, I have outlined the importance of narratives for LGBTI(Q+) applicants to make their

identities ‘understandable’ for decision-makers. The NGO workers supported clients who had gotten their claims rejected because they often did not fit into the norms and because they were unable to express their narratives in the necessary format.

Greatrick’s (2019) study found that support organizations for LGBTI(Q+) asylum applicants in Lebanon and Turkey ‘coach’ beneficiaries to fit into ‘Northern’ LGBTI(Q+) identity categories.

While my data points in a similar direction, I suggest the process is more subtle than Greatrick suggests. Through co-creating applicants’ narratives, I found that NGO workers ‘translate’ clients’

narratives into “a language that makes them readable and worthy of protection” (Akin, 2017,

p.469). Akin (2017) found how LGBTI(Q+) asylum seekers in Norway perform their sexualities to fit into (what they perceive as) the normative ‘Western’ ideas about an LGBTI(Q+) lifestyle, to become

‘readable’ for the decision-maker as ‘really’ LGBTI(Q+). While I do not have data on how asylum seekers themselves experience and portray their sexuality, I found that NGO workers can help applicants present their experiences in such a way that they become ‘readable’ to the decision-maker. While in my research the ‘coaching’ happens implicitly by ‘strengthening’ clients’ narratives,

the outcome is the same as the one found by Greatrick: NGOs help clients become ‘readable’ as ‘real’

LGBTI(Q+) refugees, making their identities understandable within the decision-makers’ norms.

The NGO workers I spoke to operate from a position of pragmatism: they believed they were not going to change the asylum procedure or its normative demands, so instead they help their clients present themselves as well as possible within them. In the process, while helping individual clients ‘pass’ the LGBTI(Q+) asylum assessment, they reproduce dominant expectations about LGBTI(Q+) subjectivities and asylum seekers’ narrative capabilities. McGuirk (2018)

describes how in the United States, specialized NGOs and lawyers use ‘homonormative’ ideas about

‘credible’ LGBTI(Q+) subjectivities to engage in a similar selection procedure as the state,

determining who is eligible for legal aid and support. I did not see clear evidence of these eligibility practices happening at the NGOs I researched. Instead, in these spaces, I found a similar mechanism as Greatrick (2019), who describes how NGOs on the one hand provide a ‘safe space,’ where people with a variety of subjectivities and experiences are welcome. On the other hand, NGOs reproduce normative notions of ‘credible’ LGBTI(Q+) identities and stories by helping clients become recognized as LGBTI(Q+) refugees (ibid.). The NGOs I researched do not actively question the norms through which people must be ‘readable,’ but reproduce them to help people ‘pass’ the asylum procedure.

7.3.4 ‘Saving gays’?

Puar (2007) outlines the concept ‘homonationalism’ to describe the context in the post-9/11 United States, in which securitization and militarization of the border are justified through a discourse in which LGBTI(Q+) minorities need to be ‘protected’ from supposedly homophobic and dangerous racialized immigrants. Similarly, Bracke (2012) describes how especially the Dutch see themselves as “rescu[ing] brown gays” (p.247) from Islamic ‘threats.’ In my research, I found that to be considered ‘credible,’ LGBTI(Q+) asylum seekers must present a narrative in which they suffered from the homophobia in their countries of origin, while now that they are in the Netherlands they can fully accept themselves because the Netherlands they are ‘safe.’ My findings demonstrate Luibhéid’s (2008) argument that LGBTI(Q+) asylum seekers must reproduce “racialist, colonialist discourse[s]” (p.179) about their country of origin to be ‘credible,’ reinforcing the homonationalist imaginary of the Netherlands ‘saving them.’

However, as Puar (2007) describes, only people fitting within a delimited LGBTI(Q+) subjectivity are considered ‘worthy’ of protection, a subjectivity that is highly gendered, racialized, and classed. In this thesis, I have demonstrated how those unable to present themselves as ’real’

LGBTI(Q+) refugees are rejected because they are assumed to be lying. In section 3.3, I described

how having their asylum claims rejected results in people’s exclusion from social safety, basic state services, and participation in society, which Kalir (2019) defines as a form of systemic violence that he conceptualizes as ‘Departheid’¹¹. Homonationalism, as Puar (2007) describes it, serves to justify the securitization of border control based on which ‘undesired’ migrants become illegalized. In the Netherlands, the strict assessment of who is a ‘real’ and who a ‘fake’ LGBTI(Q+) refugee

demonstrates what Murray (2014) calls “the discursive power of homonationalist formations and the ways in which they work to include a few and exclude many, thus further enforcing a neoliberal, multicultural national agenda that masks the centrality of race, gender, class and other intersecting structures of inequality” (p.23). While the Netherlands claims to be ‘saving gays,’ it becomes clear from my research that whether someone is ‘worthy’ of being saved depends on how well they can present themselves within the normative image of ‘the LGBTI(Q+) refugee.’

7.3.5 Contributions to the field

7.3.5.1 Theoretical contributions of my research

My updated conceptual model below (Figure 2) seeks to capture the theoretical contributions of my research.

Figure 2:Updated conceptual model

11 Kalir (2019) conceptualizes ‘Departheid’ as “an exercise in spatial engineering based on the identification, separation, and differential treatment of illegalized migrants” (p.20).

In this model, I express a distinction between the context of the NGO preparation process and the legal-institutional context in which the asylum procedure takes place. I demonstrate that NGO workers operate within the overlapping sphere between these two contexts, mediating between them. Within this role as mediators, they work to make the client’s life-as-lived experiences and individual LGBTI(Q+) subjectivity ‘readable’ in terms of the normative categories that the IND applies in LGBTI(Q+) asylum procedures. They do this by using their knowledge of the IND’s credibility demands (A). The NGO workers use this knowledge to co-create clients’ asylum

narratives that will adhere to the credibility demands. They elicit more information from the client that they know is relevant (B), which is facilitated by their trust bond with the client. They also help the client structure their experiences into the narrative format the IND expects (C). Further, the NGO workers use their knowledge about the IND’s credibility demands to assess the strength of the client’s narrative during the preparation process, and act as a ‘gatekeeper’ as they assess whether a client’s narrative is strong enough to ‘pass’ the asylum procedure. They use this assessment as a basis for follow-up steps in the co-creation process and the strengthening of the client’s narrative.

By practicing the client’s narrative in a trusted setting, the NGO workers help a client feel

comfortable to talk about their experiences and practice with them how to tell it in the necessary narrative format (D). It is important that clients feel comfortable telling their stories because the final narrative performance must be done solely by the client during their IND hearing.

7.3.5.2 Practical contributions

My findings demonstrate that NGOs providing legal aid fulfill a similar role as was found by other scholars to be fulfilled by asylum lawyers. Furthermore, they demonstrate that, especially for people falling outside normative categories, the demands for a ‘credible’ LGBTI(Q+) narrative are not attainable for everyone. The IND deems LGBTI(Q+) asylum seekers’ identities untruthful, based on their inability to present their narratives according to the IND’s expectations, leading to

wrongful rejections. I found that these high demands make people reliant on legal aid to be able to frame their experiences in a way that is perceived by the IND as ‘credible’.