Scandinavian design. The continuous closet and queer refugees in Denmark

Abstract

This article explores how queer refugees’ navigation of ‘the closet’, centre of the coming out metaphor, is subverting its Scandinavian Design. While many queer people in Denmark conceptualize coming out of the closet as a desirable process, allowing queer subjects to become who they truly are, this understanding is challenged by the experiences of queer refugees who are strategically (not) coming out of the closet in different spaces and at different times. Through interviews with queer refugees and volunteers of a support group in Copenhagen, the article shows how these individuals negotiate the continuous closet – (re)appearing in different spaces and at different times. In being cautious about where to come out (on dating apps, in support groups, at home), to whom (friends, family, potential lovers) and at what time(s), queer refugees balance the refugee regimes’ expectations of normative LGBT(IQ)+ identities with their own complex lived realities.