Jigsaw Migration: How Mixed Citizenship LGBTQ Families (Re)Assemble Their Fragmented Citizenship

Abstract

Mixed-citizenship families often cannot migrate immediately to their desired destinations due to sponsor income requirements, immigration quotas, and restrictive migrant labor policies. LGBTQ mixed-citizenship families are additionally constrained by policies governing their same-sex family rights. What strategies do they mobilize to build or maintain families under these constraints? To answer this question, I study lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women in mixed citizenship relationships in South Korea, which does not recognize same-sex unions, but nonetheless serves as an alternative destination for LBQ migrants with educational credentials, English language skills, or experience in tech or travel industries. Drawing on 58 semi-structured interviews with LBQ mixed-citizenship couples, I show how socioeconomic inequalities within the Global North push some LBQ people abroad and how sexuality-based inequality shapes their capacity to sponsor family members’ migration to their new destinations. I develop the concept of “jigsaw migration” to explain the multi-sited strategies that some migrants deploy to overcome these constraints, building on the flexible citizenship, multinational migration, and forum shopping literatures. I also discuss internal differences and inequalities among respondents based on national origin. This article contributes to queer migration literature by highlighting the importance of intersectionality; to multinational migration literature by demonstrating the important role that sexuality plays in multistage and multi-sited migration; and to Korean Studies by queering scholarship on migrant hierarchies in Korea.