Collective Action, Sex-Gender Dissidence, and Migration in Chile: Politicized Affectivities and Identities

This article analyzes how sex-gender-dissident migrants living in Chile interpret their involvement in activism. We develop an analysis based on ten in-depth interviews with LGBTI+ migrants residing in five regions of the country. We identify two interpretative repertoires regarding the involvement of these individuals in activism. The first, which we call political-affective, centers on the metaphor of family to describe the organizations where our interviewees participate: these spaces offer containment and protection against the injustices they face due to their gender identity, as well as mutual help and solidarity in the face of loneliness and lack of networks. The second repertoire, which we call political identity, is based on the strategic use of an identity linked to sex-gender dissidence to advance political claims. This use challenges the heteropatriarchal order and also, based on these migrants’ foreignness, the national framework upon which the nation-state is constructed.