UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside
About
Dr. Brandon Andrew Robinson is a University of California Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Beginning July 2019, they will be an assistant professor in the same department. Brandon received their PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. From homelessness to cyberspace to marriage and health, Brandon's research centers the lives of LGBTQ people to examine social inequalities today. This work contributes to the fields of gender and sexualities, race and ethnicity, health and HIV/AIDS, urban poverty and homelessness, and new media.
Current Work:
Brandon's current book Coming Out to the Streets: Gender, Sexuality, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness is a multi-site ethnographic study on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness in central Texas. This book is under contract with the University of California Press. And the National Science Foundation and the Equality Knowledge Project supported the data collection of this project.
Specifically, the book traces the paradox of LGBTQ social change. LGBTQ rights are advancing. And LGBTQ youth are coming out earlier. But LGBTQ youth negotiate their gender and sexuality within institutions for longer periods of time. For some LGBTQ youth, adults and peers reject them. The first half of the book explores, then, the youth’s narratives about their lives in families, schools, religious communities, child state custody systems, and criminal legal systems to document how these institutions discipline, punish, criminalize, and reject the youth. I coin the term the queer control complex to capture how these institutions work together to punish the youth’s gender and sexuality. These negative experiences, along with growing up poor, black and brown, and in unstable, under-resourced environments, shape some of the youth’s perceived pathways to jails and into homelessness.
Once on the streets, the youth contend with experiences of urban policing. Police often profile the youth because of their race and expansive expressions of gender and non-heterosexuality. Zero-tolerance policing, then, is not only about dealing with poverty and maintaining racial inequality but also about policing expressions of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, shelters and other service systems are not accommodating to the youth’s gender identities, embodiments, and behaviors. As a response, the youth develop what Dr. Brandon calls queer street smarts to resist and avoid unsafe gender-segregated shelters and showers. The youth also push back against the sexual regulation that often occurs within shelters. These experiences, though, keep the youth cycling between the streets, shelters, and jails. The dominant, heteronormative solutions to addressing homelessness do not provide housing stability for LGBTQ youth living on the streets.
Brandon's co-authored book Race & Sexuality is published with Polity Press. Brandon has also published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including articles in Journal of Marriage & Family, Gender & Society, and Sociology of Race & Ethnicity. In addition to these articles, Brandon has a few book chapters and other writings, including essays for HuffPost.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Gender, sexualities, LGBTQ, race, homelessness
