ABSTRACT
In recent years international research, scholarship, and activism in relation to transgender people and issues has blossomed; this work includes critical analysis of the production of a “transnormative subject,” aligned with gender binaries and neoliberal, imperialist, and racist national identity projects. The “refugee crisis” is also a global topic, though the narrative here is quite different – with the flow of refugees now often from the formerly colonized countries of the global south, or the “Oriental east,” developed northern states have shifted to embracing policies of deterrence and detention, closing borders and detaining and incarcerating refugees. Transgender asylum seekers are caught in the tension between these two dynamics: the tightening of refugee access and the moment of production of a western “transnormative subject” fit for inclusion in the nation. This chapter reads appeals from first-instance applications for asylum “protection” visas in Australia, from those identifying as transgender at the convergence of these two dynamics. It traces the geopolitical value of transgender asylum seekers who present as “transnormative” to reproducing Australian human rights law and national identity as modern and progressive in opposition to, especially Muslim, law and society, which are conceptualized as corrupt, backwards, and homophobic.
