Introduction: Staying and Learning
Oreet Ashery, 2009
Page 1 of 4
I have learnt so much from this project.
When Artangel first approached me about the possibility of working with them, I had already learnt from Satoko Fujishiro at Artangel that within the complex area of immigration law there are also specific immigration laws and procedures that apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people. The majority of LGBT individuals arriving in the UK who approach charities for help in filing their cases are gay men, and lesbians constitute a much smaller, and at times perhaps invisible, group of clients. The Staying project was set up to draw attention and awareness to lesbians who have undergone traumatising experiences in their respective countries due to their visible, or hidden, sexual orientation and who are seeking refuge in the UK in order to save themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.
From the start I realised that as someone who continuously deals with some of the complex, broad and shifting notions of immigration, and prides herself on this involvement, I actually knew nothing about immigration laws in relation to sexual orientation. Jill Power from the UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group (UKLGIG) met with Satoko and I at the onset of the project and kindly described to us in detail the specific procedures that a LGBT person might expect on arrival in the UK. Court cases, appeals, repeated appeals, detention, deportation, uncertainty, poverty and depression are some of the things that characterise the years Jill’s clients spend when they first arrive. However, there are also a few victories and some clients do become legal refugees and are allowed to stay and work here. Jill also said that, finally, the Home Office had asked for officers to be trained specifically in LGBT cases. I think this is a big step forward in the right direction. LGBT immigration clients suffer a double bind of otherness: they are foreign and sexually different. As Home Office officials might learn more about the sensitivity and specificity of these cases, attitudes might change positively. I learnt a hell of a lot from that meeting and you can find more about this aspect of the project in Jill’s text in the back section of the book.
The thing that struck me the most, as an artist, about what Jill had told us, is that an individual who would like to claim asylum in the UK due to their sexual orientation has to prove their ‘gayness’ by writing a 20 page profile on their past life in their country of origin. In this document they have to ‘prove’ somehow that they are gay and that their life is in danger for that reason. In situations where court cases take place some time after the person has been in the UK, these people also have to ‘prove’ that they have developed a ‘gay lifestyle’ in the UK and that this is their newly found identity, one that they would not be able to carry on in their respective country of origin. ‘Proving’ that you are gay might involve presenting photographs and witnesses to strengthen the written text. It occurred to me how hard it might be for someone who has spent their life hiding their identity in their home country to then somehow ‘flaunt’ it in the UK; I also wondered, how can you begin to have a ‘western gay lifestyle’ with no money, security of any kind, and traumatising life events? Apart from this, having to prove your sexual orientation in court, when your life is dependent on it, might be humiliating, exposing and terrifying.