Depictions of Queer Migrants in Berlin and London in Twenty-First Century Literature and Television

Abstract

In analysing cultural depictions of queer migration to Berlin and London since the turn of the century, this thesis addresses the increasing political demonisation of marginal groups, particularly ethnic and sexual minorities. The ongoing rightward turn in European and global politics requires an understanding of cultural productions not only as depicting marginal positionalities, such as migrant or queer, but also as providing an imaginative script for living under fraught social and political conditions. The texts analysed in this thesis work towards this end, offering both depictions of the lived experience of queer migration while also providing moments of imagined alternatives to the current reality. While this thesis deals predominately with texts written from the perspective of those on the social margins, it begins with an analysis of two mainstream television crime dramas, Dogs of Berlin and Giri/Haji. In so doing, these series are opened up to queer ways of reading and unsettling preconceived notions of the social worlds in which their characters exist. The utilisation of alternative forms of analysis in this chapter, namely Social Network Analysis, allows for an appraisal of the series’ construction of these social worlds which does not prioritise the hegemonic, but rather allows for the queer migrant characters to be centred. By bringing the liberatory potential of queerness to bear on existing, binary understandings of our social world, it is possible to construct alternative modes of living to those which currently exist. The novels analysed in the latter two chapters of this thesis go some way towards charting a path out of the quagmire of the present political moment for those on the social margins by embracing alternative ways of being in the world. Through an analysis of these texts’ depictions of queer modes of sexual practice, kinship formation and relationality in the cities of Berlin and London, this thesis aims to better understand the role cultural productions can play in imagining new ways of living for those who inhabit marginal social positions