Who Has a Right to Refuge? Rethinking Protection in an Age of Displacement
hosted by Professor
Sarah E. Parkinson
Samuel Ritholtz
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Politics, All Souls College, University of Oxford
Over the past four decades, refugee systems have increasingly recognized persecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet legal recognition does not necessarily translate into safety. Drawing on The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge, this talk examines what the experiences of displaced queer and trans people reveal about the limits of contemporary refugee protection. It considers how violence and exclusion can persist across borders, how asylum and humanitarian institutions can reproduce vulnerability, and what these experiences tell us about the meaning of refuge. The talk asks how protection systems might respond to the social and relational dimensions of displacement at a moment of growing pressure on both refugee protection and LGBT rights.
Samuel Ritholtz
Samuel Ritholtz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, University of Oxford. Their research examines political violence and displacement, with a particular focus on LGBT experiences of conflict and crisis in Latin America. They are co-author of The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026) and co-editor of Queer Conflict Research (Bristol University Press, 2024). Their research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Security Dialogue, and Third World Quarterly. And they have written for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Slate. Sam is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Qualitative and Multi-Method Research and has worked with the United Nations, including in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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