The moral politics of LGBTI asylum: how the state deals with the SOGI framework

Thearticle proposesapolitical ethnographyof lesbian, gay, bisexual, transandintersex (LGBTI) asylum founded on a fieldwork (2017–19) in an associative and activist context that supports LGBTI asylum applicants. Through the analysis of the narratives mobilized and produced during the interviews between asylum applicants and institutional agents in charge of receiving and assessing the requests for international protection, the article explores the institutional uses of the SOGI framework. The hypothesis that the article puts forward is that, far from concerning exclusively a confrontation/disputeamongmodelsofsexual orientationandgenderidentity, these interactions actually bring forth a logic of exchange of moral goods (vulnerability, feelings of shame and fear, identity, narratives). Given the impossibility for LGBTI asylumapplicants toproduceprobatorydocumentation, this study exposes the strategies for determining legitimate from illegitimate LGBTI migrant subjects, ‘good’ from ‘bad’ migrant stories, and, therefore, the political and moral dimension of the institutional work and the grant of the right of asylum.