Global feminisms in a time of migration? Gender sexuality and asylum in South Africa

This article is a revised version of a keynote address delivered at the British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section annual conference in 2015. In addition it forms a chapter of a bigger project on gender sexuality and migration (see Palmary, 2016/forthcoming) 1 . Here, however, I focus my attention on a piece of research I have been doing with asylum seekers in South Africa who are applying for asylum on the basis of persecution due to gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. However, I want to use this research as an example from which to step back and reflect on a number of themes that I feel are central challenges to feminist work at the moment and that span across global contexts. The most important of these themes – one that is acutely brought to the fore in efforts to do feminist research on migration – is that of global and local. Global and local alliances, policies, practices and theories. Of course, this is not a new theme for feminist research. But this is a tension that has resurfaced very strongly in the Southern African context at the moment. However, its resurfacing has often been crude and populist and what is lacking as I will argue is careful feminist analysis of the ways that local contexts figure in and shape global priorities. Nowhere is this more evident than in work on migration as we will see.