Monica Nyazika: A closet in migration

This piece is an intimate reflection on the ‘ordinary’ ways in which borders make migrants vulnerable to death. Whilst we tend to think of death as grand and finite, we often minimalise or forget the violence of the everyday, “But ordinary cannot be equated with harmless”. This piece appropriates the idea of ‘queer closets’ to explore my own “closet” as a former undocumented person, asylum seeker, refugee, and now British citizen. This work is inspired by the Almaarii project and uses the safe space of ‘The closet’ to explore other forms of marginalised social existence. Closets are places that we construct to contain our identities and can be sites of refuge and anguish, expression, and resentment. Whilst this piece cannot possibly do justice to the narrative of all migrants or even my own migration story. It demonstrates the multiplicity that can be found in any one migration story and the possibilities of telling these stories affectively.