scholarly journals Assessing Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Asylum Claims: Towards a Transgender Studies Framework for Particular Social Group and Persecution

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariza Avgeri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Human Rights Norms

In this article, I focus on gender identity and gender expression as grounds for international protection. After clarifying issues of terminology and theoretical framework, namely Transgender Studies, I criticize the current framework for determining membership in a Particular Social Group (PSG) for the purposes of the Refugee Convention, drawing on Berg and Millbank's work on the concept of self-identification and gender non-conformity as a means to assess transgender asylum claims (2013). I problematize the issues arising in the assessment of well-founded fear of persecution and the form it may take in transgender and gender non-conforming asylum claims. Drawing connections between sexuality and gender identity/expression claims, I attempt to provide a humanizing and depathologized framework for assessing the credibility of transgender and gender non-conforming applicants. Finally, by critiquing the work of Hathaway and Pobjoy and drawing from current human rights norms, I reflect on how to make good law with transgender cases without reproducing medicalized notions of gender identity or placing all the burden of proof on the applicants. In so doing, this article attempts to achieve a balance between theoretical and practical challenges that arise in the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process involving transgender and gender non-conforming applicants. This article serves as an attempt to critically review the existing scholarship within the framework of transgender studies and offers insights for a refined framework of refugee status determination based on an inclusive reading of Particular Social Group and persecution drawing on the reading of crucial case law from anglophone countries.

scholarly journals Trans*it: Transgender and gender nonconforming asylum claimants’ narratives in Greece

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110132
Author(s):  
Mariza Avgeri
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Identity Expression

In this article, I reflect on two interviews of transgender/gender nonconforming asylum claimants in the broader West. In the Trans*it documentary that my partners and I created, a non-binary person and a transgender woman, Ilios and Christina, interview each other on the difficulties of being a transgender/gender nonconforming asylum applicant in Greece. Greece is an understudied area with huge migration flows at the border of the EU and has no official data for Sexual Orientation Gender Identity asylum claims. The documentary, this article contends, provides a starting point for reflecting on the experiences of transgender/gender nonconforming applicants at the borders of Europe and their transition from their country of origin to the West/Greece, and for importing non-Western migrant subjectivities into our current thinking on sexuality/gender. In particular, I problematize the legal framework of Refugee Status Determination and explore the decolonization of gender identity/expression in refugee law. Finally, I reflect on the process of making the documentary and my attempt to centre the voices of gender nonconforming asylum claimants while minimizing the impact of my gaze as a white Greek researcher in the field. In doing so, this article shows how documentary film can be used as a means to further considerations of gendered normativities of asylum claims in a key, yet understudied, context. It concludes by arguing for a decolonializing approach that questions the normalization of Western standards of gender, and their transgression, in Refugee Status Determination.

scholarly journals The British and South African approaches to asylum based on sexual orientation and gender identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (59) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Vítor Lopes Andrade
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
South African ◽  
Global South ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Global North ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Since the 1980’s it has been possible to claim asylum on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in some countries. Most studies on this topic focus on countries in the Global North. Therefore, there is still a lack of research that comparatively analyses the Global North with the Global South. The aim of this article is then to analyse and compare the approaches of two countries that grant refugee status on the basis of sexuality and gender identity, one in the Global North (the United Kingdom) and one in the Global South (South Africa).

scholarly journals ‘You're not sure that you are gay yet’: The perpetuation of the ‘phase’ in the lives of young disabled LGBT + people

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Toft ◽  
Anita Franklin ◽  
Emma Langley
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Authentic Identity ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Lgbt People ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Identity Shifts

Contemporary discourse on sexuality presents a picture of fluidity and malleability, with research continuing to frame sexuality as negotiable, within certain parameters and social structures. Such investigation is fraught with difficulties, due in part to the fact that as one explores how identity shifts, language terms such as ‘phase’ emerge conjuring images of a definitive path towards an end-goal, as young people battle through a period of confusion and emerge at their true or authentic identity. Seeing sexuality and gender identity as a phase can delegitimise and prevent access to support, which is not offered due to the misconception that it is not relevant and that one can grow out of being LGBT+. This article explores the lives of disabled LGBT + young people from their perspective, using their experiences and stories to explore their identities and examine how this links to the misconception of their sexuality and gender as a phase. Taking inspiration from the work of scholars exploring sexual and gender identity, and sexual storytelling; the article is framed by intersectionality which allows for a detailed analysis of how identities interact and inform, when used as an analytic tool. The article calls for a more nuanced understanding of sexuality and gender in the lives of disabled LGBT + young people, which will help to reduce inequality and exclusion.

Part V The Scope of Refugee Protection, Ch.42 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Refugee Claims

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Millbank Jenni
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Credibility Assessment ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Refugee Protection ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Fact Finding ◽  
And Gender

This chapter explores two key themes in modern refugee jurisprudence concerning sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) claims over the past 35 years. First, there is a persistent, indeed widening, gap between the formal acceptance of SOGI claims in refugee law—broadly taken to include authoritative international guidance, interpretative norms, and binding domestic precedent—and the implementation of such law through the low-level administrative practice that comprises the vast bulk of refugee status determination (RSD). Secondly, although SOGI claims are often considered as marginal or exceptional cases, they should be seen as a key axis from which to understand major developments and failings of refugee law across the board. The chapter then suggests that SOGI claims are a paradigm example of the ontological challenges at the heart of RSD. These include the enduring challenges posed by fact-finding and evidentiary practices such as future-focused risk analysis, credibility assessment, and the interpretation of claims across culture.

Logics of Gender Justice and Their Meaning for the Study of Sexuality and Gender Identity: A Dialogue

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-526
Author(s):  
Phillip M Ayoub
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Role Of Religion

Abstract This piece dialogues with Htun and Weldon's exceptional new book, The Logics of Gender Justice, as it relates to LGBTI rights. Beyond engaging the authors' questions of when and why governments promote women's rights, I also engage their argument that equality is not one issue but many linked issues, including issues of sexuality and gender identity. My own reflections on their work thus address the contributions the book makes to the study of political science, as well as open questions about how their logic of gender justice might apply across other issue areas less explored in the book. Htun and Weldon's own definition of gender justice also rightly includes space for LGBTQI people, which I see as an invitation to think through the typology in relation to these communities. The piece begins by reflecting on the book's theoretical and methodical innovations around the complexities of gender politics, before moving on to the multi-faceted role of religion in gender justice, and then theoretical assumptions around visibility of the marginalized.

Sexuality and Gender Identity: From a Discursive to a Relational Analysis

1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Burkitt
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Relational Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Discursive Constructions

This paper concentrates on the recent controversy over the division between sex and gender and the troubling of the binary distinctions between gender identities and sexualities, such as man and woman, heterosexual and homosexual. While supporting the troubling of such categories, I argue against the approach of Judith Butler which claims that these dualities are primarily discursive constructions that can be regarded as fictions. Instead, I trace the emergence of such categories to changing forms of power relations in a more sociological reading of Foucault's conceptualization of power, and argue that the social formation of identity has to be understood as emergent within socio-historical relations. I then consider what implications this has for a politics based in notions of identity centred on questions of sexuality and gender.

scholarly journals The Challenge of Implementing Preferred Gender Pronouns: Queer Autonomy in the Age of Information Technologies

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-16
Author(s):  
Zooey Sophia Pook
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Age Of Information

A preferred gender pronoun or PGP is the gender pronoun, or set of gender pronouns, an individual uses to represent themselves and by which they would like others to use when they represent them (PFLAG). The use of PGPs is meant to show respect to the autonomy of individuals whose gender identity may not conform to the appearance of others, or individuals whose identity is gender non-binary (HRC). The use of PGPs is suggested as a best practice by nearly every major LGBT+ organization in the US (PFLAG, HRC, etc.). Today, systems for implementing PGPs exist everywhere from college applications, hospital intake forms, dating websites, and beyond. While the use of PGPs shows respect for transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, these practices have unintended consequences as they contribute to the ever-expanding economies of data collection, made possible through the rise of information technologies. This work will explore questions of economy and power related to the collection of PGPs and the challenge of queer autonomy in the age of neoliberal capitalism.

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