title: Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity.
abstract: Our article is about the new relevance of the category of "the homosexual" in immigration policies. This novelty is paradoxical: while homosexuality had previously been defined exclusively in negative terms, from the point of view of the State, it has now assumed a positive value in the West--since it can be invoked to justify asylum seeking. The argument has two prongs. On the one hand, taking homosexuality into account for immigration control implies a definition of gay identity. On the other, the objects of these policies are also subjects: their own identity is caught up in this transnational process of identification. Fieldwork for this article was conducted in France on bi-national same-sex couples. However, the new categorization of homosexuality extends far beyond--in Europe and throughout the world. We argue that the politics of identity are not just, and not primarily about identity politics; they have to do both with politics in general and policies in particular.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science and Department of Gender Studies, Université Paris 8, 2 Rue de la Liberté, 93526, Saint-Denis, France, eric.fassin@univ-paris8.fr.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fassin
authors.forename: Manuela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salcedo
mesh_terms: D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D005783:Gender Identity; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D011057:Politics; D012747:Sexual Partners; D012933:Social Identification