Queering solidarity : South Asian diasporic activism and solidarity in US and UK racial justice struggles

Abstract

This article explores the linkages between queerness, racialisation, activism, and community care in the South Asian diaspora. It examines activism, organizing, and social movement work practiced by queer diasporic South Asians in the UK and the US. By understanding South Asian activist relationship to, and solidarity and partnership with, Black liberation activism, this article conceptualises a framing of queer South Asian diasporic solidarity. This solidarity is framed 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 modern-day queer South Asian activists in the diaspora. Finally, it argues that queer feminist South Asian activists in both countries 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.