MIGRATION AND LGBTI REFUGE IN BRAZIL: TRAJECTORIES OF VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE (2024 – 2025)
migration; refuge; LGBTI; invisibility; transnational family; support networks; human rights.
This research analyzes the challenges faced by LGBTI migrants and refugees living in the cities of Brasília and Rio de Janeiro between 2024 and 2025, based on semi-structured interviews. The narratives reveal language barriers, experiences of familial, community, andinstitutional homotransphobia, as well as difficulties in entering the labor market. For most participants, the family of origin did not remain as a space of affection and support after displacement, which undermines and challenges the concept of the “transnational family,” widely discussed in migration studies. In the cases analyzed, migration represented a rupture with family ties; therefore, unlike what has been demonstrated in studies on transnational families, even when there were possibilities of maintaining family connections through remittances and communication, homotransphobia outweighed the possibility of sustaining affective bonds. Thus, the research shows that migration does not only entail breaking away from oppressive family and community contextsand facing new structural barriers, but also creating new networks of belonging. In these experiences, resistance is expressed in the reinvention of ties and in the construction of ways of existing that challenge the limits imposed by exclusion.