Queer kinship and the rights of refugee families Samuel Ritholtz * and Rebecca Buxton Refugee Studies Centre, Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK *Corresponding author. Email: Samuel.Ritholtz@qeh.ox.ac.uk Abstract Over the past decade, the refugee protection regime has supposedly become more inclusive of queer and trans* people. Much literature has focused on the expansion of refugee status determination and the inclusion of LGBTQ asylum seekers. However, there are many areas of refugee policy that remain dependent on cishe- teronormative assumptions and therefore exclude the queer and trans* forcibly dis- placed. This paper considers the concept of ‘the family’ and how it is used and understood in refugee protection. We make the normative argument that queer and trans* family units ought to qualify for refugee family reunion and group status de- termination. We do so by considering the concept of queer and trans* ‘chosen fami- lies’, arguing that these queer articulations of kinship are functionally and morally comparable to cisheteronormative conceptions of the family. We contend that con- sidering the cisheteronormative underpinnings of the family in this way opens up the potential to queer other areas of refugee policy, and therefore paves the way to a more inclusive refugee protection regime. Keywords: family reunion, forced migration, group status determination, LGBTQ, queer theory, SOGI 1. Introduction In October 2018, a group of migrants began their journey from San Pedro Sula, Honduras,to the Southern border of the United States. Collecting others along the way in Guatemala and El Salvador, this group—who were fleeing persecution, poverty, and vio- lence—came to be known as a ‘migrant caravan’ (Amnesty International 2018). Among those walking the 4,000 km distance were 80 LGBTQ migrants from across Central America. 1 News coverage reported that many of the LGBTQ migrants chose to separate from the main caravan because of persecution and abuse from other migrants (Flores 2018). As the LGBTQ migrants were fleeing generalised violence that disproportionately targeted sexual and gender minorities in areas where discriminatory beliefs are embedded at the societal level, their vulnerabilities continued even as they left their countries of origin. Self-segregation as a doi:10.1093/migration/mnab007 V C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com MIGRATION STUDIES VOLUME 0  NUMBER 0  2021  1–21 1 ed from https://academic.oup.com/migration/advance-article/doi/10.1093/migration/mnab007/6179036 by Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, samuel.ritholtz@qeh.ox.ac.uk on 22 M