Understanding trans* asylum seekers' experiences of UK border practices

英国的跨国庇护寻求者被英国的庇护制度严重边缘化。作为寻求庇护者，他们面临着英国边境政策的结构性暴力，这些政策将边境治安延伸到整个英国社会，在从就业、住房到医疗保健等领域制造种族主义和阶级偏见。对于跨性别寻求庇护者来说，这种暴力行为不仅因为内政部接受性别认同庇护申请的比例低而臭名昭著，而且还因为更广泛的官僚障碍和性别混杂的迷宫，进一步破坏了他们的安全和在英国国内社会获得支持的机会。然而，尽管跨国寻求庇护者面临的挑战是跨部门的，但即使是有同情心的现有研究，也很少涉及他们与英国边境系统有关的生活经历、观点和机构。这不仅是学术文献中的一个空白，也限制了我们对他们如何驾驭英国现有的移民政策以及如何减少这些政策的排他性的理解。对此，我的研究将通过使用多地点民族志来展望跨国寻求庇护者生活在英国边境实践的经历。通过这一点，我将进一步引起人们对现有政策加剧跨*寻求庇护者边缘化的具体方式的关注，以及他们用来谈判英国边境制度的策略。在这样做的过程中，我将展示阶级、种族、殖民主义和性别结构如何与英国边境互动，因为英国边境是一个跨国场所，产生了特别是西方对跨性别和顺常态的理解。通过这一点，我希望通过强调国内西方对跨性别的概念化并不是一个中立的预先给定的分析对象，而是通过渗透到英国国内社会的边界实践来积极实施和复制，从而为欧洲跨性研究的去殖民化做出贡献。在这方面，我还将通过突出顺规性在以超越国内和国际政治之间的传统区别的方式构成边界做法方面的作用，为关于边界作为社会产生的现象的国际关系的更广泛的理论辩论做出贡献。在方法上，我将执行一项多地点的民族志，包括对相关政策文件的初步批判性话语分析，对支持跨庇护寻求者的组织的嵌入参与者观察，以及对参与观察期间确定的跨庇护寻求者和关键政策制定者的半结构化访谈。通过这一点，我希望有助于更广泛的理论辩论，包括殖民时期的跨性别和反常态以及国际政治中的国内/国际区别。除此之外，我还将为地方和国家一级的政策行为者提供明确的政策建议，以减少他们对跨*寻求庇护者的边缘化，并希望有助于将学术和政策讨论转向与跨寻求庇护者在一起，而不是关于跨寻求庇护者。

Trans* asylum seekers in the UK are acutely marginalized by the UK's asylum system. As asylum seekers they face the structural violence of UK border policies that extend border policing throughout UK society in ways that create racialised and class precarity in areas from employment, and housing to healthcare. For trans* asylum seekers this violence is further exacerbated not only by the notoriously low rate at which gender identity asylum claims are accepted by the Home Office but by a wider maze of bureaucratic hurdles and misgendering that further undermine their safety and access to support in domestic British society. Yet, despite the intersectional nature of the challenges trans* asylum seekers face, even sympathetic existing research does little to engage with their lived experiences, perspectives and agency in relation to the UK border system. This is not only a gap in the academic literature but also limits our understanding of how they navigate theUK's existing migration policies and how these might be made less exclusionary.In response to this, my research will foreground trans* asylum seekers lived experiences of UK border practices through use of multi-sited ethnography. Through this I will both draw further attention to the specific ways existing policies exacerbate trans* Asylum seekers' marginalization and the strategies they use to negotiate the UK border system.In doing this I will show how structures of class, race, coloniality and gender interact with the UK border as a transnational site that produces particularly western understandings of transness and cis-normativity. Through this I hope to contribute to the task of decolonizing European trans studies by highlighting the ways domestic western conceptualizations of transness are not a neutral pregiven object of analysis but rather actively enforced and reproduced through border practices which permeate domestic UK society. In this I will also contribute to wider theoretical debates in International Relations on borders as socially produced phenomena by foregrounding the role of cis-normativity in constituting border practices in ways that transcend the conventional distinction between domestic and international politics. Methodologically I will perform a multi-sited ethnography comprised of initial critical discourse analysis of relevant policy documents, embedded participant observation with organizations that support trans* asylum seekersand semi-structured interviews with trans* asylum seekers and key policy makers identified during the participant observation.Through this I hope contribute to wider theoretical debates on the colonial production of transness sand cis-normativity and the domestic/international distinction in International politics. Beyond this I will also provide clear policy recommendations for local and national level policy actors on reducing their marginalization trans* asylum seekers and hope to contribute to shifting academic and policy discussions to being with rather than about trans asylum seekers.