Transnational ways of belonging and queer ways of being. Exploring transnationalism through the trajectories of the rainbow flag

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the trajectories of the rainbow flag through the concept of transnationalism and sets up a theoretical exchange between transnational migration research, critical sexuality studies, and queer scholarship. By engaging with the analytical differentiation between transnational ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’ this article reads these concepts through a queer lens, while also challenging some of their underlying assumptions. We are asking if, and in that case how, the rainbow flag can be regarded as a visible manifestation of transnational ways of queer being, and as a floating signifier filled with different meanings through quotidian acts and diverse and unequal queer ways of being – interlinked as it is with global hegemonies and colonial genealogies besides signifying local specificities – but nevertheless somehow indicating transnational ways of queer belonging to an imagined queer community.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational
• queer
• postcolonial
• rainbow flag
• homonationalism
• globalisation

Introduction

In March 2016 rainbow coloured stamps, to ‘celebrate LGBT Pride’, were released by PostNord, the postal service of Sweden and Denmark (Duffy 2016). The so-called rainbow or pride flag can now officially transgress borders, as it can be sent to all corners of the world. However, this recent incident is only one of many border-crossing moments that can be related to the complex transnational genealogies, usages, and enactments of the rainbow or pride flag. Since the 1990s, the rainbow flag has gradually emerged as a globalised and likewise contested symbol for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Inter* and Queer (LGBTIQ¹) communities and is increasingly being used by a wide range of different political actors, movements and organisations to claim or designate support for LGBTIQ rights or/and various notions of (sexual) diversity, tolerance and gay-friendliness (Binnie 2004; Binnie and Simmons 2008). Despite the political significance of the flag for LGBTIQ politics and queer mobilisation all over the globe, as well as the economic importance of an increased commercialisation and circulation of rainbow products, there exists little to no research on the changing, travelling and transnational implications of one of today’s most important queer symbols.

Therefore, this article aims to discuss the trajectories of the rainbow flag through the lens of transnationalism, particularly by engaging with the analytical differentiation between transnational ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’ proposed by Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; see also Glick Schiller 2004, 2009). With these concepts, Levitt and Glick Schiller aimed to grasp the multi-layered and multi-sited transnational practices, social relations, identifications, and dynamics of trans/migrants that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders and link together their societies of origin and settlement in fragmented and discontinuous ways. While transnational ‘ways of being refers to the actual social relations and practices that individuals engage in’, ‘ways of belonging refers to practices that signal or enact an identity that demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004, 1010; emphasis in original). Symbols and cultural products play, as Steven Vertovec also has noted, an important role in maintaining transnational linkages and performing transnational attachments in everyday life (Vertovec 1999). Against the backdrop of Levitt’s and Glick Schiller’s analysis, we want to shed light on transnational dimensions and implications of the rainbow flag, asking if and how the transnational entanglements and circulations of the flag can be read through the concepts ‘transnational ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’, and, if so, which insights can be drawn from such an theoretical discussion. How does the rainbow flag express or implicate a way of belonging to a (imagined) transnational queer community, connecting queers across borders or with a fictional home? Can we read quotidian engagements with the rainbow flag as visible expressions for transnational ways of queer being, signalling a constant negotiation between ‘local’ experiences of estrangement and transnational ways of queer belonging? However, our aim is not only to establish a theoretical exchange between transnational migration research, critical sexuality studies and queer scholarship, but also to challenge and extend those concepts through a queer reading.

The article proceeds in three sections: first, we present a brief evaluation on how insights from queer studies have been employed in critical migration research and vice versa. Secondly, we attempt to discuss the rainbow flag in relation to transnational ways of belonging, asking how the flag can be read as a symbolic re-enactment or boundary object of queer communities, also signalling a conscious identification with this (imagined) transnational community. And third, by rereading and rethinking queer and postcolonial scholarship on non-normative sexualities’ and genders’ experiences of (national) exclusion, disidentification and estrangement through the lens of transnationalism, we are asking if, and how, the rainbow flag, as a floating signifier filled with different meanings, can be regarded as a visible manifestation of transnational ways of queer being.

Queering transnationalism – transnationalising queer

Despite a growing body of research on queer migration and queer diasporas, as well as on transnational sexualities filling the gaps of the weak links between global studies and queer studies pre-1990s (Povinelli and Chauncey 1999), transnational migration research has paid little attention to insights from the field of queer, sexuality and LGBTIQ studies. Cantú for instance, claims that most migration research ‘is framed by heteronormative assumptions that not only deny the existence of non-heterosexual subjects but also cloak the ways in which sexuality itself influences migratory processes’ (Cantú 2009, 21). Manalansan further highlights that heteronormativity and its complex entanglements with processes of migration and ‘integration’ are also marginalised within gender related and feminist analysis of migration (Manalansan 2006). According to Shephard, sexuality and heteronormativity still ‘remain ignored, trivialised, derided, or conflated with gender’ in current migration research (Shephard 2012, 34). Also within recent studies focusing on transnational ways of being and belonging, the transnational dimensions and implications of queer communities and queer organising, as well as their complex impact on the daily lives of queer sexualities and genders, remain an under-researched topic (Manalansan 2000).

However, while queer interventions into migration studies have emphasised the relevance of a queer perspective beyond queer subjects, the literature on queer migration has hitherto tended to study queer bodies crossing borders in different geopolitical contexts, such as queer asylum seekers, rather than to queer transnational migration research (Shephard 2012; Cantú 2009). Much queer migration research has focused on persons that are unable to express their genders or sexualities where they live, and the few studies on so-called same-sex marriage or queer partner migration tend to discuss queer intimacy and feelings that are represented by legal documents (as in indicating relational intimacy in resident- or short-term visa applications, etc.), thus leaving out migration due to queer intimacy and feelings that are related more ad hoc (someone falls in queer love, or becomes attracted queerly) when being abroad (Ahlstedt 2016).

Despite the fact that processes and effects of a transnationalisation of queerness, including a transnationalisation of certain social/identity categories such as LGBTIQ, have been an important subject in recent postcolonial and queer scholarship (e.g. Altman 1996a; Grewal and Kaplan 2001; Binnie 2004; Massad 2007; Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan 2002), these approaches nevertheless lack a systematic discussion of, and engagement with, the concept of transnationalism. Transnationalism tends to be used interchangeably with globalisation or with global/ised/ing processes, thus describing phenomena, identities, cultural products or politics which somehow transgress national borders, contexts or communities and/or are intrinsically intertwined with a global/ised/ing queer discourse or commodified queer consumer and media culture. While critical migration research has contributed to an analytical distinction between globalisation and transnationalism, queer research on globalisation has not yet engaged sufficiently with the different meanings and implications of those concepts and related social processes. In the field of queer, sexuality and LGBTIQ studies, transnationalism is rather increasingly being related to a critique of the implications and effects of a Western hegemony and neo/colonial sexual politics when it comes to definitions of LGBTIQ identities, rights, or sexual/gender justice (see Bacchetta and Haritaworn 2011; Massad 2007; Puar 2007). While the employment of transnationalism in critical migration research is mainly based on actor-oriented approaches and a strong focus on quotidian practices of persons related to experiences of migration, queer and postcolonial research perspectives, on the other hand, have tended to focus on a concept of (homo)transnationalism that puts more attention on the effects of ‘Euro-American empire formations’ (Chiang and Wong 2016, 3). Despite the fact that a ‘transnationalist turn’ in queer studies emerged out of a desire to counter Eurocentrism, racism and the unquestioned hegemony of whiteness in research on sexualities and genders, the strong focus on the hegemony of Western notions of (homo-)sexuality and gender have, as for instance Chiang and Wong (2016) have noted, instead promoted a marginalisation of the complexity of regional or transnational dynamics and local processes (see also Jackson 2009a, 2009b; Grewal and Kaplan 2001).

The rainbow flag signalling transnational ways of belonging: re/constructions of an imagined queer community

Certain times and contexts have established different sorts of symbols for non-normative sexualities and genders, working as re-enactments or boundary objects for an imagined queer community of belonging. The US artist Gilbert Baker’s design of the rainbow flag in the late 1970s in San Francisco aiming to create a ‘beautiful’ symbol for the lesbian and gay ‘tribe’ (Antonelli and Millar Fisher 2015) was eventually recognised – despite its rootedness in the US history – as the most prominent cultural symbol for self-identified LGBTIQ communities and movements. It went global particularly through its use during pride parades and festivals in the 1990s, in conjunction with its increased employment by the new wave of (professionalised) transnational LGBTIQ rights and HIV/AIDS activism at the end of the 20th century (Binnie 2004; Thoreson 2014; Picq and Thiel 2015). Nowadays, the rainbow flag is waved in pride parades and LGBTIQ related events all over the globe – in Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Johannesburg, Taipei, Berlin, San Francisco, and in many more cities and venues – even though the political struggles, contexts and intentions of the activists and participants do differ. Kuchu² and self-identified LGBTIQ activists are, for instance, using the rainbow flag in Uganda to protest against state sponsored homo- and transphobia, while in Europe – even conservative politicians – agree on hoisting the rainbow flag on official buildings, like city halls or government buildings, in order to demonstrate their commitment to diversity and tolerance. Simultaneously companies, cities, and cafés in many cities around the world use the rainbow flag for branding themselves as LGBTIQ-friendly (Laskar, Johansson, and Mulinari 2016; Alm and Martinsson 2016).

Thus, the flag is not only mobilised as an empowering symbol against heteronormative sexualities and genders, but also driven by what Altman and Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan have described as capitalised processes of ‘global queering’ (Altman 1996a, 1996b; Cruz-Malavé and Manasalan IV 2002). The rainbow flag has become a globalised cultural commodity that can be purchased on the capitalist market and as a signifier of (neoliberal) tolerance and diversity aimed at inviting and producing as many consumer subjectivities as possible (see also Jackson 2009a). In line with Glick Schiller’s, Basch’s, and Blanc-Szanton’s (1994) emphasis on the relevance of global capitalism for the formation of transnational relationships, the transnational meaning of the rainbow flag can therefore only be grasped fully by taking into account the role of market-based processes and capitalist formations in the creation of new transnational queer communities, networks, and related LGBTIQ subjectivities and identities (e.g. the global market for LGBTIQ films, magazines, porn, rainbow items etc.). Additionally, the rainbow flag is also becoming increasingly entangled with the emergence of homo(trans)nationalist configurations (see Puar 2007) and what Haritaworn, Erdem, Tauqir have termed ‘gay imperialism’ – the racialised usage of LGBTIQ-friendliness as an indicator for (western) modernity, civilization and development (Haritaworn, Erdem, Tauqir 2008; Klapeer 2018). Thus, the emergence and global circulation of the rainbow flag, or rainbow items, can be analysed as a highly ambivalent process shaped by neoliberal, capitalist, but also homonational and neo/colonial formations and logics.

However, it might indeed be the diversity and fluidity of its meanings, and even its conflicting and contested usages that has formed the rainbow flag into the most prominent global symbol associated with LGBTIQ communities and its shifting ideas of contested affects or politics such as pride, commonness or liberation. Against the backdrop of critical migrations scholarship, the rainbow flag can therefore be read as a boundary object signalling a way of belonging to an imagined, and at the same time differentiated and unequal, transnational queer community. According to Glick Schiller, ways of belonging refers to practices that signal or enact an identity that demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group, or an imagined idea of this group. The rainbow flag as a symbol for, and expression of, transnational queer belonging ‘links people through their imaginative actions to those located across national boundaries’ (Glick Schiller 2009, 32). These connections become, according to Glick Schiller, visible through activities that mark this belonging, as in our case, through the waving or wearing the rainbow flag.

The rainbow flag has, and is, being used by different political actors from various contexts and geopolitical spaces to construct and perform an imagined transnational queer commonness or, what Watney also termed as an ‘imaginary unification’ (Watney 1995, 60), often based on the idea of shared experiences of trans*/inter*- and homophobia, of violence and discrimination over time and space (see also Binnie and Simmons 2008; Fortier 2002; Weeks 1996). Experiences of frictions, marginalisation, exclusion and persecution within different national, local, cultural, or diasporic communities, have therefore contributed to the emergence of the contested and – particularly from the position of racialised and classed queers – problematic notion of a (fictional or desired) LGBTIQ (trans-)nation – nation as in a fictive homeland, an imagined transnational community of belonging hypothetically open for all queer sexualities and genders with different local belongings and identifications (Fortier 2002). The rainbow flag has become iconographic for a politics of hope and the desire to imagine and demand a (safer?) place, a home and community of belonging that embraces LGBTIQ rights and inclusivity, sometimes beyond one’s actual place of residence, sometimes within the above contexts. Hence, by focusing on queer lives and the performativity of transnational queer communities, it becomes evident that the rainbow flag somehow problematizes the danger of losing home due to one's non-normative sexual and gender performance, or the precarity of home, or what Brah termed as ‘homing desire’ (Brah 1996). This reading, however, challenges how home has been conceptualised within a number of transnationalist studies – such as, home as a positive attachment, or as heteronormative familiarity. According to Anne-Marie Fortier’s critical engagement with transnational queer cultures ‘home […] is not an origin, but rather a destination’, which is constantly in the making (Fortier 2002, 189). In her critical discussion of processes of queer migration Fortier particularly problematizes the idea of ‘home-as-origin’ and ‘the ideal of “home” as a site of familiarity and comfort’ (Fortier 2003, 412).

Notions of a (queer) home become particularly precarious from an intersectional, decolonial, migrant, diaspora, or queer of colour perspective, and by focusing on the complexity of various intersections of power asymmetries. Brah for instance notes that home can be both a place of security and terror (Brah 1996). Due to this multi-axial performative conception of power a safe place for the majority (e.g. white, male and/or cis-gendered/normative people) can at the same time be a terrifying place for the minority (e.g. queers of colour, female and trans* and inter*people) (Brah 1996). Moreover, Brah draws attention to several ways in which a group that is constituted as a minority along certain differentiation processes may be constructed as a majority along others (Brah 1996). Thus, our critical reading of concepts draws on post- and decolonial queer and feminist scholarship, especially that of feminist and queers of colour. They have extensively elaborated on the implications of multiple belongings and the ambiguity of home in regard to race, class, gender, and other entangled intersections related to particular social and geopolitical contexts and positionalities (see: Morraga and Anzaldua 1983; Mohanty 2003; Grewal and Kaplan 2001; Johnson 2001; Cruz-Malavé and Manasalan IV 2002; Eng, Halberstam and Muñoz 2005).

Thus, not everyone who engages in queer ways of being necessarily identifies with the rainbow flag as a symbol of a particular way of queer belonging, but rather may reject this symbol (for instance, the rainbow flag might be perceived as too much connected to a ‘moderate’ or white LGBTIQ movement). And moreover, not everyone who uses the rainbow flag and identifies with an imagined transnational community necessarily engages in queer ways of being (for instance, when the flag is being hoisted on official buildings). Accordingly, the global circulation of the rainbow flag and its symbolic meanings are linked to a number of epistemological and political debates within queer studies and LGBTIQ activism, centred around the implications and effects of racialised, classed and geopolitical asymmetries on queer communities, and the re-production of new and old (colonial) hegemonies and (homo)normalising tendencies within transnational queer networks and politics (see Altman 1996a, 1996b; Bacchetta and Haritaworn 2011; Haritaworn, Erdem, and Tauqir 2008; Massad 2007; Puar 2007; Rao 2015). The fragility of the notion of a (transnational) queer ‘homeland’, racism and classism, as well as other forms of exclusion and inequality within the imagined queer communities, has in recent decades drawn attention to the links between the rainbow flag and homonationalist projects and homonormative policies in for example the US, Israel and Europe (see Puar 2002; Duggan 2003). As a significant consequence, several scholars and activists have an ambivalent relationship to the rainbow flag. Some regard the rainbow flag as a sign of a growing globalised commercialisation, homonormalisation, whitewashing and commodification of queer cultures. The flag is also seen as a symbol for a new sexual neo/colonialism, gay imperialism as well as Islamophobia enacted and promoted by states besides LGBTIQ organisations from, and in, the Global North (Altman 1996a; Bacchetta and Haritaworn 2011; Massad 2007; Puar 2007).

While these critiques illuminate the homonational and hegemonic implications of the use of the rainbow flag in some contexts, Grewal and Kaplan have, however, been arguing that processes of a queer transnationalism as well as globally circulating sexual identities and symbols should not be analysed only through the lens of Western cultural imperialism or Americanisation, and that Western LGBTIQ-identities should not only be regarded as constructions in opposition to a (subversive) local queer particularism in the Global South/East (Grewal and Kaplan 2001; see also Jackson 2009a, 2009b). On the contrary, an imagined transnational queerness, as signified by the rainbow flag can on a (trans)local level implicate productive instabilities, because a struggle for and identification with universals has not only mobilising effects, but must be seen as a highly contradictory and performative process which creates only a momentary idea of a stable queerness or LGBTIQ commonness (see also King 2002). Following Grewal and Kaplan, the local is not simply a negotiation of the transnational and related hegemonies, rather it is entangled in it in complex and messy ways, opening up for multifaceted understandings of the relationship between queerness, transnationalism and floating symbols like the rainbow flag (Grewal and Kaplan 2001). It is therefore highly problematic to locate the rainbow flag only in the Westernised transnational space, and to perceive all those who use the flag, particularly those situated in the Global South and East, as passive victims of its hegemonic meaning (Grewal and Kaplan 2001, 671). The rainbow flag is therefore less of a representation of stable or pre-discursive universal queer identities and more of a floating signifier which becomes interpreted, used and contested with regard to particular places, situations, and political struggles (see Laskar, Johansson, and Mulinari 2016; Alm and Martinsson 2016).

Against this backdrop, the rainbow flag can therefore both signify belonging to a transnational imagined community, and as such, at the same time, shadow the local diversity and struggles of queer subjectivities that are always already mediated by social-, economic- and geopolitical positions, and affected by race, gender, age, ability, etc., as well as by a multiplicity of political analyses and visions. Along this line of argumentation, and stressed by other theorists, the constructions of queer communities are infused by a variety of claims, micro-politics, and refigurations of the global, thereby constantly affirming, redefining, and re-articulating the very idea of a connection between the local meaning(s) of the rainbow flag and its function as a symbol for transnational belonging. However, people, who adopt particular forms of ’cultural representations’, such as the rainbow flag, indicating a certain way of belonging, may well find themselves ‘new participants in transnational social fields and from the belonging enter into transnational ways of being’ (Glick Schiller 2009, 32), an aspect we take up in the next section.

The flag signalling (transnational) queer ways of being: estrangement, disidentification and resistance

Having discussed the rainbow flag as an ambivalent and contested boundary object for multiple entangled queer ways of belonging, locally and transnationally, we will now intricate the reflection by adding notions on transnational queer ways of being. According to Levitt and Glick Schiller’s transnational migration approach, transnational ways of being refers to the ‘various quotidian acts through which people live their lives across borders’ (Glick Schiller 2004, 458). Current migrant research recognises that an increasing number of migrants are transmigrants ‘whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationships to more than one nation state’ (Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1995, 48). Glick Schiller and Levitt speak of ‘simultaneity’ with regard to transnational lives, pointing out that their ‘daily activities, routines, and institutions [are] located both in a destination country and transnationally’ (Glick Schiller and Levitt 2004, 1003). Due to multiple attachments, transnational migrants have been found to develop what Vertovec (2004) has coined as transnational ‘bifocality’ in dealing with the often conflictual relationship between their local ways of being and transnational ways of belonging (Vertovec 2004). ‘Transnational ways of being’ therefore can implicate a certain displacement, and transnational migrants are described as having multiple attachments, affiliations, and memberships.

Similar to the observation of Glick Schiller and Levitt, who draw on the experiences of trans/migrants, the experiences of queers and self-identified LGBTIQs can likewise implicate a sense of bifocality, or rather multifocality, in the dealing with conflictual relationships and multiple attachments, and might accordingly be related to transnational ways of being, as ‘living simultaneously within and beyond the boundaries of a nation-state’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; 1006; see also Fortier 2002, 2003). Queer scholarship (see, e.g. Butler 1990; Fortier 2002, 2003; Phelan 2001; Richardson 2000; Alexander 1994), has particularly shown that the lives of non-normative sexualities and genders have been characterised as potentially precarious and estranged due to the effects of a racialised heteronormativity, classed homonormativity and (partial or full) exclusion from the national community and citizenship. Against this backdrop the status of queers does sometimes (but of course not necessarily) implicate a transnational moment, in the sense of crossing political or material borders, and potentially transgressing, expanding or estranging the boundaries of national or cultural images, ideals or norms. Sexual and gender queers have been described as a group that has to negotiate what is being perceived as ‘normal’, ‘natural’, ‘healthy’ or ‘patriotic’, for example by doing, feeling or desiring in friction with the national (Alexander 1994). They can also, to speak with Muñoz on queers of colour, dis-identify when negotiating subjecthood as minoritarian in a majoritarian world, by means of misrecognition through failed interpellation (Muñoz 1999). Dis-identification can therefore also mean working on and against national logics through quotidian and context specific tactical misrecognitions of some hetero- and homonormative, racialised and classed norms and requirements of inclusion and citizenship, while at the same time complying with, instrumentalising or being privileged by others (see also Puar 2007). It is therefore important to keep in mind that queerness does neither constitute a resistant or subversive position against the nation/al per se, nor that all queer subjects have been, or are, critical against national/ist discourses or practices. Rather than being the quintessential stranger, queers could be regarded as ‘multiple figures of ambivalence, [as] many strangers who trouble and destabilise the nation’s boundaries’ (Puar 2007, 48).

From above follows that queer lives can be related to what Glick Schiller et al. conceptualize as a transnational way of being, moreover, that a queer perspective might also expand and complicate the concept of transnationalism itself. Queers and self-identified LGBTIQs have been described as also having to deal with different value systems (for instance, with regard to definitions of the family, of proper sexuality, the correct gender and gender norms), languages, codes and signs, and identifications, and might as well experience a sense of ‘multi-locality’ and/or ‘dis-location’ (Fortier 2002). Queers can, due to a marginalised status in relation to heteronormativity, be exposed to a persistent in-betweeness, thus obtaining multiple connections with their place of settlement as well as with numerous material, fictional, or virtual queer communities and networks within and beyond national borders. However, experiences of dis-location, dis-placement and in-betweeness are further complicated when focusing on the shifting positionalities, assymmetries and transnational social relations and attachments of queers of colour, queer migrants, or queer refugees, particularly their multifaceted and often difficult relations with (white, hegemonic, racist) queer communities and diasporic mobilisations in the Global North, or the place of their (perceived) ‘origin’ (Manalansan 2000).

While experiences of ‘decentred attachments’, of being simultaneously ‘home away from home’, and ‘here and there’ are mainly associated with experiences of (non-queer) migrants (Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1992, Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1994; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Vertovec 1999, Vertovec 2004), these experiences do also constitute the lives of many non-normative sexualities and genders. However, our intention here is not to establish a comparison or similarity between these experiences, because this would downplay the violence of migration and border regimes and promote a single-axis perspective, assuming that experiences of queerness and trans/migration are mutually exclusive. We rather want to put forward that questions of an absent or precarious home, the experience of ‘dislocation, […] the (often) forced movement away from family, home, homeland’ (Binnie 2004, 82), the experience of ‘separation and loss’ (Sinfield 1996, 280), of a ‘traumatic displacement’ (Fortier 2002, 188) are also recurring topics in queer politics, activism and art.

From this follows that queers have, and are, engaging in transnational ways of being, due to experiences of estrangement and frictions: Exclusions from national rituals, symbols and images have therefore helped the circulation and popularisation of queer symbols, representations, objects, materiality (as consumer goods) parallel with the spreading of queer companies (for instance, to distribute films and magazines) and international networks, communicating in real life and in cyberspace (Altman 1996a, 1996b; Binnie 2004; Fortier 2002). An imaginative connection that is being felt, constructed and constantly re-narrated has led to the establishment of a wide range of queer transnational ties and several transnational attachments connected by cultures, institutions, activities, communications structures, organisations, and communities that span across and within nations, transgress borders, continents, cultural, and religious contexts. This imaginative connection was further promoted by economic and social globalisation processes, the emergence of new communication technologies and a new wave of transnational queer organising due to the effects of the AIDS pandemic (Binnie 2004; Watney 1995).

Accordingly, quotidian acts entailing the use of the rainbow flag, such as wearing a rainbow sticker or a rainbow badge as well as carrying the rainbow flag during pride parades or other local events, can be regarded as manifestations of (transnational) queer ways of being and an expression of transnational ways of belonging. However, those acts can also be read differently, such as simple gestures signalling the dissatisfaction with one’s living situation due to experiences of frictions or a lack of proper LGBTIQ rights legislation, paralleled by a fractured attachment with one’s place of residence. The rainbow flag may therefore express a constant negotiation between local queer ways of being and (transnational) ways of queer belonging. While the particular political meaning of the rainbow flag is constituted through the specific context, temporality, and purpose it is being enacted for, the flag nevertheless becomes linked and is invested with the symbolic power related to an (imagined) transnational queer community (Weeks 1996). The flag can therefore demonstrate protest, critique, dis-identification or at least a small indifference towards heteronormative or homo- and transphobic living conditions on a daily basis (e.g. by wearing a rainbow batch) or with regard to particular events (e.g. by weaving the rainbow flag during the pride parade). The rainbow flag functions as a symbol for navigating between a complex web of social norms and languages, while at the same time implicating a fictional but potential connection to a greater community across borders, offering a (transnational) way of queer belonging. Similar to the discussion of Glick Schiller, Bash and Blanc queers may use their ‘varying and multiple identities generated from their simultaneous positioning in several social locations’, e.g. their feeling of belonging to a (transnational) community, to both ‘accommodate and to resist the difficult circumstances and the dominant ideologies’ (Glick Schiller, Bash and Blanc 1992, 4–5). Hence, the multiple constructions and local enactments of a (imagined) queer community, a rainbow nation, can also be read as a site of enablement and resistance, particularly because the flag is open to (local) re-articulations and interpretations of this queer belonging. By signalling queer ways of belonging and transnational ways of queer being, the flag can therefore function as a resource of empowerment shaping and influencing concrete queer ways of being. Queer might then be read as engaging ‘simultaneously in more than one nation-state’, but likewise involving crossing the boundaries of the nation state to create meaningful and also empowering social relations (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004, 1029).

However, queers may well be regarded as living transnational lives (for instance, by consuming particular queer products) without actually defining themselves as transnational subjects or without always consciously practicing transnational acts or constantly being involved in transnational queer ways of being. Queer ways of being can also manifest in a multitude of rather unspectacular quotidian practices, such as ordering queer movies from an internet rainbow-decorated platform, engaging in same-sex activities, getting children in same-sex relations, visit a gay sauna or pub marked by a rainbow flag, or surfing on a queer dating platform.

In line with Levitt and Glick Schiller’s transnational approach, which acknowledges that migrants might at the same time build ties to the societies they live in and maintain a range of meaningful connections to their societies of origin, the position of queers can likewise be read as an ambivalent status which shows that ‘assimilation and enduring transnational ties’, (homo)national(ist) ways of being, and transnational queer ways of belonging are neither incompatible nor binary opposites (Levitt and Glick Schiller’s 2004, 1003). Despite a multitude of ontological, epistemological and political differences, contestations and inequalities related to this symbol, the rainbow flag connects, constructs and most likely also empowers marginalised sexual and gender identities in different geopolitical spaces, implying hope for queer existence in a multi-faced way. The shifting meanings of and political contestations over the flag (such as the debate over adding a brown and black stripe to make visible queers of color and to tackle racism and the lack of intersectionality in queer communities) may therefore rather support the transnational significance of the flag for queer ways of being and the desire for queer ways of belonging.

Concluding remarks

By focusing on non-normative genders and sexualities, and discussing the rainbow flag as a floating symbol or signifier, this article sets up a theoretical exchange between transnational migration research, critical sexuality studies and queer scholarship. In analysing transnational ways of belonging to imagined queer communities, and transnational ways of being, our dialogic method and analysis has, in line with other scholars’ findings, brought to the forefront how transnational social fields are created through concrete quotidian practices in the local context as well as through performative acts signalling particular identifications and ways of belonging. Our discussion also challenges and expands these concepts through a queer reading and by highlighting sensitivity for local meanings and enactments, power inequalities within these transnational social fields as well as by challenging some of its underlying assumptions, for instance with regard to heteronormative conceptualisations of home as a site of positive attachment. By focusing on queer sexualities and genders, our article has shown that the creation of transnational queer configurations and social fields can be related to homo- and transphobic violence, experiences of friction, estrangement or exclusion from national images.

Accordingly, the rainbow flag’s contestations and multiple meanings as a boundary object can, in relation to ways of being, be regarded as signalling hope for queer existence, and therefore also be read as a site of enablement and resistance, or simply dis-identification or indifference with some heteronormative norms or constraints of everyday life. In addition, ways of belonging can be analysed as enactments of queer identity that demonstrate a conscious connection to an imagined transnational community signified by the use of the rainbow flag. However, the use of the rainbow flag to signify ways of belonging at different places and spaces is both interlinked with global hegemonies, sexual rights and tolerance discourses and imperial and colonial genealogies, and has at the same time also local and specific significations (since some queers also reject the flag). The queer identities and subjectivities that are entangled with transnational networks are therefore ruptured and ambiguous, and not the sole effect of either local or global situations nor of the discourses alone. The local is not a negotiation of the transnational, but rather entangled in it in complex and messy ways, opening up for multi-layered understandings of the relationship between queerness, transnationalism, imagined communities of belonging and boundary objects like the rainbow flag.

We have suggested here that transnationalism indeed provides a productive conceptual lens through which to read various border-crossing queer practices, identifications and ties. In addition, queer perspectives contribute to a broader understanding of transnationalism, because it can account for the heterogeneity of relations and experiences within transnational social fields and goes beyond bifocal negotiations between a clear defined place of origin and residence. Queer transnationalisms should therefore be viewed as a rich vantage point from where to explore, and also expand, a range of different perspectives on the multi-faced manifestations and contours of transnationalism.

Acknowledgments

Our special thanks goes to Petra Dannecker and Sara de Jong for their support and efforts in putting together this special issue. We also want to thank all the authors of this issue for their helpful comments during our writing workshop in Vienna in 2016, as well as the reviewers for their constructive critique. This article is the result of a truly cooperative working process; the collection of the material, the analyses and the writing have been done together, on equal terms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [2014-01418].

Notes

1. By taking our point of departure in critical queer and poststructuralist theory (Butler 1990; Foucault 1978) as well as in postcolonial and decolonial gender and sexuality studies (Muñoz 1999; McClintock 1995; Stoler 1989), we are aware that terms like queer or the abbreviation LGBTIQ have been, and still are, debated, contested and challenged from very different angles and viewpoints and that these terms are particularly problematic when being used beyond the Euro-American context (Massad 2007). When we use the term LGBTIQ, it is related to a specific historical and political context or movement which is based on these social categories and/or identifications. Following queer theory, we also employ queer as a verb (to queer; queering) which points to our intention to deconstruct, destroy, question, destabilise, and displace certain phenomena related to sexuality and gender from a critical theoretical perspective (Warner 1993).

2. Kuchu, a term of Swahili origin, is being used as self-description of sexual and gender queers in Uganda.