SEES Fall Seminar: "The Geography of Internal Queer Displacement", Rachel Springer, Ph.D.

PSU's School of Earth, Environment, and Society welcomes you to join us for the Fall 2026 SEES Seminar Series: Toward an Integrative Earth, Environment, and Society, offered as EES 4/507 to undergraduate and graduate students. Our lineup includes faculty and professional experts representing a diverse array of scholarly specializations in SEES: archeology, geography, glaciology/geophysics, and environmental science and studies, among them. These talks will be offered in person in Cramer Hall 53 on Thursdays from 3:30-4:30 PM.

Link to full seminar schedule

Abstract for October 29:
Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is fracturing the geography of safety in the United States, pushing queer and trans people toward sanctuary regions like the Pacific Northwest. Drawing on thirty-four interviews with LGBTQ+ migrants who moved to Oregon or Washington between 2022 and 2025, I argue that these moves constitute internal political displacement, driven by cumulative coercions that erode the habitability of place. Bringing together mobility justice, disability justice, and critical environmental justice, I examine how arrival brings real but uneven gains and how narratives of voluntary migration obscure the structural pressures behind them.