"We're not just fighting for something that's outside of us; we're fighting for something that's inside of us:" A decolonial examination of queer youth's sources of resilience in Madagascar confronting cultural stigma

Abstract

This study examines the sources of resilience among queer youth in Madagascar as they navigate cultural stigma rooted in colonial impositions. Utilizing a decolonial framework, this research challenges Western conceptualizations of resilience by recognizing how colonial legacies have disrupted indigenous understandings of gender and sexuality in Madagascar. Through semi-structured interviews with six queer Malagasy youth (ages 18-30), this community-based participatory research illuminates how cultural stigma functions as a form of collective emotional abuse while revealing sophisticated knowledge systems youth develop to maintain authenticity and wellbeing. Findings reveal four key dimensions of resilience: strategic navigation between visibility and concealment across social contexts; reclamation of pre-colonial cultural acceptance as psychological protection against stigma; cultivation of chosen family and community despite limited options; and creative expression as emotional processing. Participants demonstrated remarkable agency in transforming colonial disruption into cultural regeneration, moving beyond mere coping to active creation of new cultural possibilities. The research reframes cultural stigma as collective emotional abuse perpetrated through multiple sources simultaneously—family members, religious institutions, healthcare providers, and strangers—creating an inescapable environment of invalidation. This perspective relocates the deficit from marginalized individuals to oppressive systems, suggesting interventions should target colonial knowledge systems rather than helping youth "adjust" to oppression. Significantly, participants expressed a profound longing for intergenerational connection with queer elders, highlighting how colonial disruptions severed traditional knowledge transmission about gender diversity. This study contributes to filling critical gaps in academic literature by centering Malagasy voices in conversations about queerness that have historically excluded them, challenging both colonial legacies and Western assumptions about gender and sexuality while documenting the extraordinary resilience of queer Malagasy youth who aren't merely surviving colonial legacies but actively creating new possibilities for authentic existence.