Sexual asylum regimes and politics of belonging: Narratives of deservingness in the political-public discourse in Switzerland

Abstract This article explores the ways in which narratives of deservingness in the field of sexual asylum become crucial elements of national border drawing and boundary work, and important instruments of a politics of belonging. Switzerland is a particularly interesting case study in which to explore these issues due to the supposed humanitarian tradition on the one hand and conservative policies on gender and sexuality issues on the other hand. Drawing on literature on belonging and sexual nationalism, we conduct a qualitative analysis of textual data representing the political–public discourse. Four interconnected narratives of deservingness regarding the sexual asylum regime were isolated: (1) postcolonial geopolitics of national imaginaries; (2) Eurocentric/Western representations of queerness and a corresponding politics of the queer body; (3) hierarchizing categories of vulnerability; and (4) a general narrative of (dis)belief. We argue that the political–public discourse on sexual asylum should be understood as part of a broader moral economy concerned with the creation and definition of the Swiss community and its politics of belonging.