Recruitment information in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Presented by London Metropolitan University’s Gender and Sexual Diversities Research Group (which sits under the Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre)

‘Queer migration’ studies concerning the experiences of Latin American LGBTQ+ migrants have primarily focused on the US (Bianchi et al., 2007; Cantú, 2009; Epstein & Carrillo, 2014). However, the experiences of Latin American migrants living in the UK are currently underexplored in social science research, as this is a relatively new, fast-growing population of a quarter of a million, half of which live in London (McIlwaine & Bunge, 2016). And the intersecting experiences of LGBTQ+ Latin Americans in London are seemingly invisible in research, especially the experiences of trans and non-binary migrants.

In this talk, Dr Sebastian Cordoba will discuss his ongoing research exploring the experiences of trans and non-binary Latin American migrants in London. This qualitative study uses innovative methodologies such as ‘walking interviews’ (Marcotte et al., 2022) and examines this data using a psychosocial and intersectional lens, asking participants to discuss their migration motives, their sexual and gendered resocialisation, their participation in queer and Latin American spaces and communities, and the challenges and opportunities of living in London, with a focus on psychosocial support needs.

This research aims to answer the following research questions:

1. How do participants understand their migration histories in the context of their gender and sexual identities?

2. What are the positive and negative experiences of trans and non-binary Latin American people living in London, and how do these affect them emotionally?

3. How do participants navigate their identities and experiences among Latin American and queer communities/spaces in London?

Dr Sebastian Cordoba (he/him) is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at London Metropolitan University in the UK. Sebastian is a social and LGBTQ+ psychologist. His research interests include gender, sexuality, and language; new materialist approaches to research; and corpus linguistics. He is also a member of the Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre. His latest book “Non-binary gender identities: The language of becoming” (2023) published by Routledge, examines how non-binary people discover, adopt, and negotiate language in a variety of social settings, both offline and online.