Peace Beyond the Binary: A Creative Intersectional Perspective on Global Forced Displacement

When I saw a touring version of the musical Rent as a 12-year-old, I was enthralled by the characters’ fluid, complex identities—and their deep, tender care for one another—as they experienced housing eviction alongside HIV/AIDS illness and death. Rent first sparked my curiosity about the intersectional factors that underscore peoples’ experiences of forced displacement and shape their resilience.

The main characters respond to the mass eviction of their unhoused neighbors by planning a solidarity-building protest and public performance, which their landlord requests that they cancel to keep the peace in exchange for free housing. They refuse to accept “peace” for their own well-being if it means status-quo violence for others in their community. In a defiant celebration of their queer subculture at the end of the first act, the lead character exclaims: “the opposite of war isn’t peace—it’s creation!”¹ This lyrical moment spotlights how peace cannot be a crucial determinant of health and well-being if underlying systems of power remain the same; when addressing forced displacement on a global scale, public health responses must instead prioritize dismantling binary social constructs and intentionally creating inclusive care systems.

THE ROLE OF BINARIES IN VIOLENCE AND DISPLACEMENT

Now, as a queer person and a public health student focused on humanitarian contexts and forced migration, I am acutely aware of how the themes of Rent continue to resonate in 2022. The global COVID-19 pandemic has intensified existing cycles of violence and displacement generated by structural inequality, poverty, the climate crisis, and political instability.^2,3 These systems operate through divisive, binary social categories—rich and poor, woman and man, Black and White, perpetrator and victim, citizen and foreigner—making people at the intersection of marginalized identity dimensions increasingly vulnerable to violence and forced migration within and across societies.⁴ Binary frameworks also determine which displaced populations receive refugee designation and, thus, protection. In this way, “refugee crises” are produced, as nation-states socially construct who is a “deserving [versus] undeserving victim of violence” on one side of a border versus another.^5(p5) More than ever, public health practitioners must reflect on whether the structures of our programs, our policies, our research, and our organizations actually reproduce, rather than challenge, the binary constructs that perpetuate the cycles of violence we aim to disrupt.

Across interventions to address displacement, the reproduction of binary constructs may seem logical and useful. For example, conceptualizing gender as a binary can allow researchers to statistically analyze and confirm the heightened prevalence of violence victimization among refugee women versus refugee men, and practitioners can address this disparity by implementing women-targeted programming. Binary distinctions can also help a public health practitioner confirm whether a gender-based violence survivor has refugee status and, thus, whether they can legally access support services within certain borders.

However, by relying on binary constructs to inform such a response, researchers and practitioners exclude the complex needs of displaced populations who transcend socially constructed categories in terms of migrant status, gender, race, age group, and a range of other identity dimensions. What if an internally displaced person has an acute need for gender-based violence services and they are intersex, or transgender, or have a disability that prevents them from attending in-person services? All of these individuals may fall outside the target population of many programs as they are currently designed.

Evidence shows that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning plus (LGBTQ+ or queer) refugees do often face complex barriers to inclusion across contexts because of their intersectional identity dimensions. In addition to their liminal status between citizen and noncitizen, queer refugees must navigate how others will treat them from context to context based on their gender expression and sexual orientation, which can limit their access to resources for health and well-being.

A study of transgender asylum seekers in Mexico found that they experienced discrimination in education and employment based on their evolving gender identities, violence from both their families and state officials, and adverse mental health outcomes.⁶ In another study, LGBTQ+ refugees and asylees living in a range of contexts in the United States and Canada reported widespread experiences of violence and a lack of support resources and protection across institutional levels and locations.⁷ These studies highlight how refugees who transcend binary constructs face violence and displacement not just from their communities but also from a migrant protection apparatus designed for refugees whose identities are assumed to fit neatly into predetermined boxes.

DECONSTRUCTING BINARY SYSTEMS WITH CREATIVE INTERSECTIONALITY

Applying the lens of intersectionality is crucial for understanding the link between binary constructs and the perpetuation of displacement. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s original use of the framework explored how binary conceptions of gender and race in the US legal system produced differential access to systems of justice for women who had experienced violence; the structural separation of racial discrimination and gender discrimination privileged White women’s and Black men’s experiences and obscured the cross-cutting effects of gender and race for Black women.⁸ In seeking to address forced displacement, I argue that we must incorporate an expanded version of intersectionality—what I call “creative intersectionality”—that explores how global systems of power relate to and shape one another, recognizes that identity dimensions are not dichotomous nor essential but are developed by translocational experiences and sociocultural contexts, and prioritizes critical action to deconstruct binaries in favor of new systems for collective well-being.^9,10

For example, using creative intersectionality as a lens to understand and ultimately address forced displacement requires that we examine all forms of binary constructs, and not just those imposed on an individual’s identity dimensions. Dubal et al. posit that we must move beyond analyzing the social determinants of health (such as gender, race, and class) to confront “infrastructural determinants of health” such as nation-state borders. As binary constructs of “in” versus “out,” borders provide an illusion of peace among their elite while simultaneously displacing people and “distinguishing who does and does not have the right to access care.”¹¹

Applying creative intersectionality unveils this illusion and invites us to dig deeper into why those borders exist in the first place. Creative intersectionality as a perspective for addressing forced displacement thus falls under the broader strategy of decolonization or “dismantling the [violent] legacy of formal colonialism and imagining its replacement.”^9(p109) It is also guided by the leadership of Indigenous resurgence scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who avows that “we can’t have resurgence without centering gender and queerness, and creating alternative systems of accountability for sexual and gender violence.”^12(p30)

The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation. Creation can mean uplifting participatory, qualitative research methods wherein people can construct their lived experiences apart from the fixed categories assigned to them. It can mean including more gender options in a survey than “man or woman.” Creation can include legitimizing chosen families and other kinship structures rather than privileging biological nuclear families. It can mean building local mutual aid networks for anyone who requests resources and support rather than limiting service eligibility based on identity requirements. Creation is making intentional space for and amplifying the leadership of those not represented by dichotomous categorizations or the systems of power maintained by binaries and borders. Creation is bolstering indigenous peoples’ power with collective land and resources. The current moment of climate and health crises is a crucial one. If the field of public health wants to reduce forced displacement and to promote global peace as a determinant of health and well-being, we must use creative intersectionality to construct inclusive care systems within and across contexts.