Queering solidarity : South Asian diasporic partnership with black liberation movements in the US and the UK

Abstract

This article explores the linkages between queerness, racialisation, activism, and community care in the South Asian diaspora. It examines the organising work practiced by queer diasporic South Asians in the UK and the US. By understanding South Asian activist relationship to Black liberation activism, this article frames queer South Asian diasporic solidarity through contrasting articulations of joint struggle, allyship, and kinship in queer communities. To articulate this struggle, the article contrasts histories of South Asian racialisation, politicisation, and queerness in the UK and the US, and synthesises first-person activist accounts of modernday queer South Asian activists in the diaspora. Finally, it argues that queer feminist South Asian activists are employing a model of queered solidarity with Black activists and Black liberation, though in differing forms in each country, that centres queer intimacies and anti-patriarchal modes of organising for liberation across queer communities of colour.