Shifting equality from the margins: the Common European Asylum System and the making of trans rights in the European Union

Abstract

This article investigates the role played by the main European cooperation mechanism on asylum, the Common European Asylum System, in the making of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights in the European Union. Based on a one-year qualitative inquiry in Brussels and online, it shows that European Union asylum policies were a key arena for the consolidation, invention and renegotiation of European Union lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights, especially concerning trans recognition. This pioneering role, far from being fortuitous, was part of the conscious strategy of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex movement to use asylum as a ‘side door’ to the creation of a de facto recognition of ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic. Characterising this phenomenon as a ‘politics of interstices’ and analysing the importance of ignorance (and not just knowledge) as a tool for policy change, this article makes the case for an analysis of policymaking that acknowledges the importance of non-equality-specific arenas in the making of equality norms.