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Abstract: This article discusses the challenges faced by scholars involved in gender and LGBTIQ+ studies and research, within a context of increased attacks by anti-gender coalitions of social movements and parties. It highlights the precarious and vulnerable position of gender and LGBTIQ+ scholars in an academic environment set by neoliberal agendas and anti-gender rhetoric. The contribution reflects on the role of academic institutions in reinforcing dominant power structures and the resistance efforts by LGBTIQ+ scholars against this backdrop. The study underscores the importance of understanding these dynamics for the future of LGBTIQ+ studies and the broader context of academic freedom and knowledge production in Italy and beyond.

Between 2020 and 2021, the fight against the hate crimes bill proposal on discrimination and violence based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability marked a pivotal moment in the ongoing mobilization against LGBTQ+ rights in Italy. Proposed by the main center-left party, the Bill proposal encountered a strong opposition both by right-wing and by MPs of the progressive area itself. In particular, the category of gender identity was targeted as a danger, a confused notion, a trojan horse of the "gender ideology", etc. The Bill first adopted by the Lower House was later blocked at the Senate, thanks to the decisive action of Senator Simone Pillon, a founder and member of the Italian anti-gender movement, elected in 2018 with the radical right party of the League, led by Matteo Salvini. Anti-gender groups such as ProVita & Famiglia and Family Day, who had been campaigning against "gender theory" and "LGBT ideology" for over a decade, led this battle from outside the Parliament, online and in the streets, but also inside the Senate, during the parliamentary auditions to which they were massively invited to participate.

Abstract
The article proposes a political ethnography of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) asylum founded on a fieldwork (2017–19) in an associative and activist context that supports LGBTI asylum applicants. Through the analysis of the narratives mobilized and produced during the interviews between asylum applicants and institutional agents in charge of receiving and assessing the requests for international protection, the article explores the institutional uses of the SOGI framework. The hypothesis that the article puts forward is that, far from concerning exclusively a confrontation/dispute among models of sexual orientation and gender identity, these interactions actually bring forth a logic of exchange of moral goods (vulnerability, feelings of shame and fear, identity, narratives). Given the impossibility for LGBTI asylum applicants to produce probatory documentation, this study exposes the strategies for determining legitimate from illegitimate LGBTI migrant subjects, 'good' from 'bad' migrant stories, and, therefore, the political and moral dimension of the institutional work and the grant of the right of asylum.