The Way Out

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This joint session of Qualifie and the Migration Working Groups features a presentation by Dr Samuel Ritholtz, who studies identity, violence and displacement, with a focus on LGBTIQ+ populations. He co-authored the book with Rebecca Buxton.

Over the past four decades, the global refugee regime has expanded to recognise queer and trans people as claimants of protection. Yet this inclusion sits alongside growing backlash against refugee protection and LGBTIQ rights, and sanctuary remains out of reach for many. 'The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge' (University of California Press, 2026) centres the narratives of LGBTIQ refugees to ask what justice would require of a protection system that so often fails them. This roundtable brings the author into conversation with three EUI scholars: their expertise in gender, intimate life and the pursuit of more just social relations; in the determination (and performance) of asylum, particularly those of LGBTQI+ applicants in Latin America; and in qualitative methods and the study of identity and political violence will shape a discussion of what justice for queer refugees demands in theory and in practice, and of how we research displacement and carry out sensitive fieldwork.

The roundtable will close with an open Q&A, and researchers and everyone interested are warmly welcome.

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.