In this paper, we analyze Iceland’s policy and practice regarding SOGI minorities amongst resettlement refugees and asylum seekers. Iceland has an international reputation for being a gender equal society, both with regard to women’s rights and the rights of LGBTQ people. Both claims, however, can easily be problematized. Gender equality is often used by national leaders to beat their own drums in international for a, while the same leaders turn a deaf ear to demands for improvements at home. In this context, it is interesting to consider what the status of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities are in a society that identifies as a leader in both of these fields. Over the last decade, Iceland focused its resettlement refugee efforts on single women heads of household, thus reflecting the outward facing identity of being the best place in the world for women. In 2017, it accepted a small group of queer refugees, all the while deporting members of that same minority who had come to Iceland as asylum seekers. The paper asks whether Iceland has identified a “desirable refugee” that it is willing to accept? The paper draws on policy documents, interviews with stakeholders and refugees and asylum seekers, to shed a light on the way in which the system responds to the specific needs of this group.

Omarsdottir is an Associate Professor of International Affairs at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. She studies Iceland’s foreign and security policy from a feminist perspective.
Steinþórsdóttir is an MA student in International Affairs at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland.

Alexandra Dögg Steinþórsdóttir, Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland