In my PhD studies in the field of social work I examine what kind of subject positions and belongings are constructed for LGBTQI refugees in the authority narratives of social workers and immigration authorities, and how queer refugees themselves talk back to these narratives. My research is connected to the discussions on identity construction, belonging, decoloniality, heteronormativity, homonormativity, and homonationalism. In my studies, I hope to twilight the positions and encounters that queer refugees have in the Finnish social services and asylum processes, and what kind of normativities, presumptions and identity categories are presented. Academically, I locate my study to the field of social work research, and I aim to contribute to implementing queer and postcolonial theory and anti-oppressive practice in Finnish social work research. Methodologically, my study is based on narrativity and reflexive ethnography, as well as developing participatory social work research methods. My research material consists of interviews with social workers, written asylum decisions, group discussions with LGBTQI people with refugee background and fieldnotes. I have started the project in fall 2018.

Social work is a profession that strives for social equality and justice, and for many newly arrived refugees social workers are important allies in a strange society. Still, social work has its professional roots in the colonialist civilizing mission and philanthropy. Heteronormativity as well is still prevailing especially in social work with refugees, where most service users are assumed to be used to very fixed and conservative gender roles and family values. Homonationalism and homonormativity are central concepts when analyzing social work narratives as well as narratives written in asylum decisions of queer migrants. Even though social work and asylum decision-making have very different functions inside the nation state, they both represent national institutions and they both contribute to the discursive production of boundaries, categories, normativities, and impossibilities, possibilities and compulsions of belonging.

Inka Söderström is a first-year PhD candidate in social work at the Tampere University, Finland. Their main research interests center on anti-oppressive and feminist social work, queer studies, migration and decolonial practices as well as multidisciplinary, intersectional and participatory approaches.

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