MARICOLANDIA

GUARI-WIN speaks for the MARICOLANDIA collective about the everyday struggles of queer migrants from the Global South in Europe. The speech denounces racist structures, homonationalist violence, exclusions in the healthcare system and state repression - and calls for resistance and self-organisation.
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Presentation of the collective and its work

Hello, Buenos dias, Bom dia

I am GUARI, co-founder of the collective MARICOLANDIA, a feminist, anti-racist, anti-homonationalist collective of gays, queers, effeminates, trans People and Queers, which is open to all queer people with a history of migration from the Americas, the Caribbean and other countries of the Global South. We are mainly in Paris, but also in Spain, Belgium and Germany.

We are doing grassroots work by resisting the logic of oppression and the hostile and xenophobic laws that are emerging across Europe.

Our work enables queer migrant people to learn the language of the country and supports them in obtaining general rights, sexual health (fight against HIV and STIs), housing, work, etc. Our work is by and for us.

Our invisibility comes from our difficulties and the few material possibilities to organise ourselves independently and freely. We have always faced many oppressions related to our migration status, our sexual orientation, our HIV status, and so on.

The inability to speak the languages of the countries in which we settle (France, Germany...) or having to learn them by force is part of these difficulties. We have to live without papers or fit into the logic of categorisation into "good" and "bad" migrants.This is the result of the policy of residence permits in France and Germany. This is all because of a policy thatThe global South has become hostile to the global South, especially in recent years with the rise of right-wing and far-right parties in Europe.

Concrete discrimination and struggles

Access to healthcare and work is becoming increasingly difficult for LGBTIQA+ migrants.It is becoming increasingly difficult for migrants, especially for those without papers. This can be seen in the impact that the anti-migration laws and the latest regulations (police checks, etc.), which are intended to make us even more vulnerable, have on our lives as migrants.have inside.

Access to healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult following the latest migration movements because the authorities are making life difficult for us.

Our collective wants to draw attention to the fact that in recent years several migrants from the South (South America, Africa and Asia) who are looked after by MARICOLANDIA have been confronted with major administrative difficulties:

● Refusal of residence permits for people with HIV/AIDS who are asked to leave France immediately. The difficulties faced by HIV-positive migrantswith or without papers become unbearable. France, for example, denies them health services and deports them, jeopardising their lives. Under the pretext that Latin America or other countries in the South have all the medicines. This is just a neoliberal logic of death. Europe continues to ignore how capitalism, neoliberalisation and the privatisation of healthcare in our countries in the Americas and the Caribbean MSM and trans Killing women. Many humanitarian and social organisations have become third-party companies of the state and see us as LGBTIQ+ migrantsThe government only sees this as a means to keep their fat subsidies. Today we also know that Donald Trump's hostile policies are seriously jeopardising the fight against HIV/AIDS.
● Refusal of asylum on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation, followed by an expulsion order (OQTF) if these people cannot return to their country because they risk their lives there.

We, the people of Maricolandia, are also opposed to the law in France, which prohibits customersinside of sex workerspenalised because it increases insecurity and violence against trans women and also gay men who engage in sex work.

What the queer sex workersAs far as the members of our group are concerned, we condemn the fascist (border) controls when we commute between France, Belgium and Germany for work. Many of our friendswere sent to detention centres in France and Germany, where they are treated in a terribly whore-hostile and xenophobic manner and from where they are to be sent back to their countries of origin. NO ONE IS ILLEGAL! And sex work is work!

Call for resistance and hope

We also condemn the Kind and the way in which we Latin American and South American queers are perceived by many (homonationalist) white cis gay people and experience violence through them. They exoticise us and perpetrate violence against us by using their positions of power against us. We condemn this because we resist the white colonial logic of homonationalism and homonormativity against us. We condemn this because it violates the bodies and lives of queer migrants.are, by their neoliberal logic and the banalisation of chemsex consumption in our community of queer migrantsWe are severely affected because we are excluded from the public health system and do not have quick access to general rights.

We remain hopeful, because since 2017, Maricolandia has been a collective organised by and for us gay, tuneful, effeminate, trans and queer migrantsis managed from the inside. We are mainly in Paris, but we have many friendswho travel to Germany to engage in sex work under terrible and violent conditions (e.g. police violence). We invite all our transThe European Parliament is calling on its members, lesbian and gay friends, to stop being silent and to organise to confront structural violence in France, Germany, Belgium and throughout Europe.

We stand together and hope that better times will come for our LGBTQIA+ communities around the world.