Legal constructions of trans* subjectivity across empires: a comparative and connected study of British India and French Algeria

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This project seeks to understand how the interaction of legal frameworks and wider cultural attitudes constructed disciplining discourses of gender/sexuality in colonial settings, alongside their contemporary legacy through analysis of the experiences of trans* refugees in France and Britain. It takes a comparative and connected approach, using 19th-20th century Algeria and India as principle case studies to focus on legal frameworks surrounding policing gender/sexuality. Throughout many pre-colonial societies, this existed outside of European imperialist boundaries and colonial legal regimes attempted to extinguish this by imposing doctrines. These have had long-lasting effects on treatments of refugees in former colonies, meaning those unable to conform to dominant ideals of cisgender heterosexuality encounter particular difficulties. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this work will engage with socio-legal theory, histories of colonial law; gender and sexuality; and decolonial/postcolonial studies. Histories of empires have advanced from attempting to understand empires as an expression of natural history, to venturing into researching transnationally. This project contributes to this scholarship innovatively by addressing issues of sexuality and the body within the law; a topic currently understudied. Without filling this gap, we cannot begin to understand the complexity of colonial power dynamics and their effects on colonised subjects and postcolonial communities.