Exploring Conceptions Of Legality And The Meaning Of Asylum Law In Johannesburg

Exploring Conceptions of Legality and the Meaning of Asylum Law in Johannesburg

Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa

This book tracks the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North—where it originated—along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. This study centres on the experiences and narratives of people that can be usefully termed 'gender refugees', gathered through a series of life story interviews. It is the argument of this book that the departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of South Africa for gender refugees have been both enabled and constrained by the contested meanings and politics of this emergence of transgender. This book explores, through these narratives, the radical constitutional-legal possibilities for 'transgender' in South Africa, the dissonances between the possibilities of constitutional law, and the pervasive politics/logic of binary ‘sex/gender’ within South African society. In doing so, this book enriches the emergent field of Transgender Studies and challenges some of the current dominant theoretical and political perceptions of 'transgender'. It offers complex narratives from the African continent regarding sex, gender, sexuality and notions of home concerning particular geo-politically situated bodies.

Access to Justice for Migrants and Asylum Seekers in Europe

Further to the 28th Conference of European Ministers of Justice (Lanzarote, Spain, 25-26 October 2007), the Council of Europe has continued working on access to justice for migrants and asylum seekers. This publication contains an assessment of the situation faced by this vulnerable category of persons in accessing justice. It deals in particular with the identification of measures - both existing and new - for facilitating and ensuring such access for these people.