Advocacy: Social Inclusion and Advocacy for Gender Minority Migrants

Dear Colleagues,

Feminist migration scholars have long made the case that migration is a gendered process in which gender is one of the strongest determining factors on a person’s mobility. It is through the critical lens of gender that researchers have unpacked how various social, political, and economic factors intersect in limiting not only a person’s ability to migrate but their experiences of settlement and social inclusion in their adoptive countries.

Gender minorities, also known as transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive populations, are often hidden from public discussions and critical research on immigration. The growing media attention within the past five years toward the human rights of gender minority migrants and asylum seekers in Europe and North America reveals a long history of transgender and gender-expansive populations migrating for critical resources and protection from escalating violence in their countries of origin. Recent scholarship on gender minority migrants has focused on their experiences navigating immigration systems and processes. Gender minority migrants must navigate legal and institutional immigration systems not designed to include their gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and socio-economic class. This has led to critical discussions about current immigration systems worldwide as hetero-patriarchal and cisnormative. 

Yet for the research that has been produced, much more needs to be done to understand the diverse experiences of gender minority migrants worldwide. Research on gender minority migrants has primarily focused on specific immigration processes for select subsections of the population, most notably asylum for binary transgender refugees. This research is still growing and necessary. However, it is also critical to understand other aspects of the gender minority migration and settlement experience, most notably social inclusion. 

Social inclusion involves improving the ability and terms of social participation for those marginalized by enhancing opportunities, access to resources, representation, and human rights. Gender minority migrants experience a multitude of intersecting oppressions that limit their full engagement in society and ability to live well both within their countries of origin and in their adopted countries. Understanding how to build advocacy with gender minority migrants and create institutional and social change, especially in gender minorities’ adopted countries, is necessary for social inclusion to be possible. 

Themes explored in this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

1. Institutional and social barriers to the social inclusion of gender minority migrants.
2. Coalitional efforts with gender minority migrants and gender minority migrants’ voices and advocacy.
3. Decolonial and transnational approaches and critiques on queer migration and social inclusion.

This Special Issue of Societies invites researchers, service providers, human rights organizations, and community activists to grow the breadth of our knowledge and understanding of the social inclusion of gender minority migrants by submitting original research papers, conceptual papers, organizational briefs, and viewpoints. We are especially interested in original research on building coalitional advocacy between gender minority migrants and human rights advocates. This issue also welcomes organizational briefs from organizations and community groups on their efforts around the social inclusion of gender minority migrants. We also invite viewpoint papers from activists and advocates around gender minority migrants’ social inclusion.

Contributions to this Special Issue must be in the form of an article, conceptual paper, organizational brief, or viewpoint addressing social inclusion and gender minority migrants.

Dr. Katherine Fobear
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• gender minority
• transgender 
• social inclusion 
• migration
• immigration
• transnational