The Utopian Facade: Queer of Colour Experiences in High Scoring Rainbow Index Countries

International reports have demonstrated that queer people of colour (QPoC) face persistent intersectional struggles across Europe. They regularly experience violence, economic exclusion, and institutional inequality as a result of systemic racism, cisheteropatriarchy, and xenophobia (ENAR, 2024; FRA, 2025b; ILGA-Europe, 2025). Yet, countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark are often celebrated as "queer utopias" based on their progressive LGBTQI+ legal frameworks (Ammaturo & Slootmaeckers, 2025; Muñoz, 2009). This contradiction between legal protections and lived realities exposes legal index’s, such as the Rainbow Index, blind spots. The focus on de jure rights obscures de facto inequalities while allowing for homonationalist narratives that erase QPoC struggles (Ammaturo & Slootmaeckers, 2025). Indeed, homonationalism deepens these inequalities by co-opting LGBTQ+ rights as symbols of national progress, while constructing racialised “others,” as inherently homophobic and culturally inferior (El-Tayeb, 2011; Puar, 2007). This paper examines how QPoC in so-called “queer utopias” (Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark) experience inequality as a result of homonationalism. Specifically, it answers the question: How do QPoC experience in/exclusion, (un)safety, and (un)belonging in social, community, and structural contexts within ‘Queer Utopias’? This research adopts an intersectional lens to capture the complex and interconnected nature of these experiences (Collins, 2019). Its theoretical framework is grounded in Queer of Colour Critique (El-Tayeb, 2011), which synthesises and expands on Queer, Critical Race, Decolonial and Critical Political Economy Theory. In doing so, it challenges the façade of queer utopias as beacons of queer acceptance. It employs an interpretative qualitative approach in order to develop a deep understanding of the experiences through a methodology combining participatory action research and multi-sited interviews. Involving QPoC as co-creators in this research allows to honour their stories as complex, lived realities. By centring QPoC narratives, this research advances intersectional understandings of queer utopias through a deeper understanding of racialised queer experiences in Europe. It dismantles the myth of "rainbow exceptionalism" by exposing the inadequacies of legislative benchmarks as progress metrics, instead illustrating the importance of lived experiences.