Abstract

Over the past 20 years, researchers and activists alike have highlighted the role of state violence, administrative erasure and criminalization in driving the precarity and social exclusion of many trans women. The experiences of migrant trans women who sell sex, however, have been largely obfuscated or ignored. This thesis aims to understand migrant trans women’s everyday lives in relation to criminal and immigration law enforcement. The research draws on seven qualitative interviews, extensive archival research and critical feminist methodologies to centre the everyday experiences of migrant trans women to illuminate ideological and social processes that construct and coordinate immigration penality.