Refugees Don’t Drink Wine, But Gay Men Should : Exploring the Intersections of Refugeehood, Sexuality and Nationality among Gay Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

Abstract: This thesis explores the experiences of self-identified gay Syrian men in Lebanon, all of whom have either registered or have expressed a desire to register with the UNHCR. The empirical data, which was collected through semi-structured interviews with five men during the autumn of 2014 in Beirut, questions what it means to be simultaneously gay, Syrian, and a refugee in Lebanon in the current climate. This research queries how the men intersectionally interact with various regimes of power which routinely identify them - mainly the Lebanese state, the wider Lebanese society, and the UNHCR refugee procedure. Oscillating between the local and the global, this thesis employs a theoretical framework which challenges how the figure of the refugee interacts with techniques of identification and processes of power, and accounts for the various ways in which the participants appropriate such processes to understand their position in the social world. In doing so, it highlights how the intersectional constructs of sexuality, nationality, and refugeehood play into varying systems of oppression and resistance, and argues how queerness and migration are more widely implicated within practices of exclusion which shape the route towards social justice in a Middle Eastern context.