Gender at the Border: Global Responses to Gender-Diverse Subjectivities and Nonbinary Registration Practices

Abstract

Respect for transgender rights broadly and recognition of nonbinary gender specifically have given rise to global legislative and policy-level reforms that purport to rectify discrimination faced by transgender and gender-diverse populations when traveling or migrating. In several countries, for example, the binary options “male” and “female” have been extended to include other possibilities in legal and travel documents, such as X, third gender, indeterminate, and unspecified. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from an online survey conducted over a period of one year, this article homes in on this phenomenon, asking how existing and expanding options for gender in passports could impact transgender and gender-diverse people’s ability to cross international borders. The article’s findings highlight how current border-security structures frequently pose a challenge for those not conforming to gender norms. Our analysis reveals an intricate set of negotiations and tensions, and elucidates the complex dynamics between macro-level practices of power and micro-level articulations of resistance that might interrupt the normative functions of law. This article also shows how existing and alternative options can be taken up in transformative ways that can be used to subvert otherwise restrictive policies. This article is part of the special issue “Media, Migration, and Nationalism” of the journal Global Perspectives, Media and Communication, guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

Framing gender identity registration amidst national and international developments: Introduction to ‘Bodies, identities, and gender regimes: Human rights and legal aspects of gender identity registration’

“…The scope of this practice is not limited to the domestic level. International human rights treaty bodies, for instance, systematically ask for gender-segregated data, and International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regulations prescribe that passports contain a sex/gender marker (ICAO 2012; see also Quinan & Bresser 2020). The practice of asking for and collecting information on gender is also not limited to national and international bodies, but is often used by providers of goods and services.…”

Non-binary gender markers: Mobility, migration, and media reception in Europe and beyond

“…The traces of those histories of removal and dispossession remain, as do their imbrication in global sexual and gender politics. (Aizura et al, 2014: 308) In this respect, initiatives like the X, which may initially signal trans-friendliness, must be viewed alongside heightened border surveillance that targets gender non-normativity (Beauchamp, 2019;Clarkson, 2019;Fischer, 2019;Quinan and Bresser, 2020). Likewise, it is in this broader context that state-level changes to sex or gender markers in passports, ID cards, and public registries must also be considered as biopolitical instruments of regulation.…”

“…In recent years, attention to transgender rights has given rise to a number of international legislative and policy reforms to sex and gender registration. Academic scholarship has also begun to delve into the critical questions that these developments have provoked (Aboim, 2020; Cooper et al, 2020; Quinan and Bresser, 2020; Quinan et al, 2020; Van den Brink et al, 2015; Verloo and van der Vleuten, 2020). One significant aspect of such attempts to address gender diversity and equality has involved the re-evaluation of how binary sex or gender markers and other identity documentation practices disproportionately impact trans and non-binary people’s lives (Spade, 2011).…”