From Metropolitan Centers to Resource Extraction Sites: Analyzing The Relationships Between Queerness, Extractive Industries, And Settler Colonialism

Abstract

This thesis examines the connections between colonial resource extraction and queerness globally, emphasizing Canada and aims to address a knowledge gap concerning the impacts of resource extraction on queer communities. Using mixed methods, I delved into the ties between colonial histories, extraction industries, and queerness. A systematic map of academic literature found that queer and non-queer workers in resource extraction industries worldwide similarly experienced stigma, prejudice, and fear related to job stress and workplace culture. Community members, including queer people, living near resource extraction projects experience heightened discrimination, gender-based violence, and crime. However, these findings are limited with only eight articles in this review. Subsequently, a critical analysis of queer and resource extraction histories challenged notions that male-dominated extractive industries and queerness are mutually exclusive. Retracing the establishment of extractive industries as instruments of settler state expansion, unmasks the persistent systemic racism, homophobia, and transphobia that fuel contemporary anti-queer movements.