"On doit sortir les réfugiés LGBT d'ici" : une étude du secret le long d'un programme humanitaire de réinstallation du Haut Commissariat aux Réfugiés en Afrique de l'Ouest

"We have to get LGBT refugees out of here!" : a study of secrecy along a humanitarian resettlement programme of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in West Africa

• Auteur / Autrice : Agathe Ménétrier
• Direction : Johanna Siméant-Germanos
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Sciences de la société
• Date : Soutenance le 16/12/2022
• Etablissement(s) : Université Paris sciences et lettres
• Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : École doctorale de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales
• Partenaire(s) de recherche : Laboratoire : Centre Maurice Halbwachs (Paris)
• Partenaire(s) de recherche : Établissement de préparation de la thèse : École normale supérieure (Paris ; 1985-....)
• Jury : Président / Présidente : Liora Israël
• Jury : Examinateurs / Examinatrices : Johanna Siméant-Germanos, Liora Israël, Joël Glasman, Sébastien Roux, Jacqueline Knörr, Olumide Abimbola
• Jury : Rapporteurs / Rapporteuses : Joël Glasman, Sébastien Roux

Mots clés

Mots clés contrôlés

Sciences sociales

Mots clés libres

Réfugiés

Réinstallation

Asile

LGBT

Afrique de l'Ouest

HCR

Refugees

Resettlement

Asylum

LGBT

West Africa

UNHCR

Résumé

Cette thèse porte sur la gouvernance internationale de l’asile, à travers l’analyse d’un programme du Haut Commissariat aux Réfugiés des Nations Unies réinstallant dans des pays européens et nord-américains des réfugié·e·s LGBT sélectionné·e·s en Afrique de l’Ouest. Organisations internationales et États occidentaux présentent la réinstallation comme un volet particulièrement « humanitaire » de la gouvernance des mobilités. En déplaçant le regard du Nord vers le Sud, cette thèse examine ce qu’il en est en pratique(s), des points de vue des agent·e·s et des réfugié·e·s. Elle offre un éclairage sur la fabrique, l’administration et les effets d’un programme de réinstallation là où le tri a lieu. À partir d’une enquête qualitative menée en 2017-2018 à Dakar, Nouakchott et Banjul, la thèse répond aux questionnements de fond : qui décide de qui est « assez gay » et « à risque » pour être réinstallé·e, selon quels critères, et que font les aspirant·e·s pour correspondre à ceux-ci ?

The thesis examines the international governance of asylum through an ethnographic analysis of a programme run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It selects LGBT refugees from and in West Africa and resettles them to Europe and North America. Shifting the focus to the South, the thesis examines the practices behind what is often presented by international organisations and Northern states as a particularly “humanitarian” aspect of the governance of mobility: it analyses the conception, the implementation, and the social effects of a refugee resettlement programme. The case study began with the observation of the opacity surrounding the departure of exiled gay Gambians from Dakar to Europe and North America under the supervision of the UNHCR. Based on the twelve months of 'fragmented ethnography' (Roux 2020) I conducted between 2017 and 2018 in Dakar, Nouakchott, and Banjul, this research responds to a series of questions fundamental to the understanding of contemporary refugee selection: who decides who is “at risk” and who is “gay enough” to be resettled to the North? With which criteria are these decisions made? And how do resettlement aspirants adapt to meet these criteria? The thesis traces the history of resettlement. It analyses the relationship between resettlement and the ethics of compassion, selection, and 'vulnerability' that have characterised asylum governance since the end of the previous century (Garnier et al. 2018; Ticktin 2011). I present resettlement as an aspect of the externalisation of asylum by states of the Global North to states of the Global South. Following the chronological typology developed by Karen Akoka—who considers that during the 1980s an “asylum seeker regime” replaced the previous “refugee regime”— I argue that the current trend is towards the establishment of an “resettlement aspirant regime” geared towards so-called “safe and legal pathways” (2020).In the UNHCR regional office for West Africa, most resettlement agents are citizens of European or North-American countries. They are lucid about the strong influence of resettlement states in refugee selection and express a sense of loss of their purpose as “humanitarians”. Participating in an emergency programme for LGBT West Africans thus emerged as what I term a professional “re-enchantment”, for which agents were ready to circumvent the usual resettlement decision-making chain. It reinforced their sense of belonging to an epistemic community of UNHCR international civil servants (Fresia 2009 based on Peter Haas' concept). However, this “re-enchantment” was tightly linked to agents’ establishment of a monopoly on the selection of the most vulnerable refugees. In turn, this monopoly relied upon a distinction between expertise acquired in the North (often associated with universalist humanist values) and the expertise of their African colleagues acquired in Africa (considered biased by local beliefs and interests). (Fechter & Hindman 2011; James 2022; Le Renard 2019). The employment and working conditions of Senegalese partners at UNHCR have become increasingly precarious (Paugam 1998). As a result, Senegalese partners came to perceive the exclusion of LGBT refugees in the resettlement programme as a negation of their role as humanitarian mediators. The opacity of resettlement criteria had the greatest impact on gay Gambians in Dakar. Trying to decipher UNHCR selection criteria for resettlement to the Global North, they developed what I term an “international vulnerability capital” at the contact of IOs in Dakar and transnational LGBT activists online. They must wait up to several years in Dakar and must thus sustain their needs. They build a “family of choice” (Weston 1991) and develop their own protection networks in Dakar's gay "milieu" (Castro 2012). Yet their eagerness to correspond to selection criteria and the competition for rare resettlement spots structures their friendships and romantic relationships.