Crossing (B)orders: The Dutch Asylum Cis-tem and the Governance of Trans Refugees

This thesis explores how trans refugees experience the Dutch asylum system, by focusing on multiple layers of exclusion and control at play. Drawing from in-depth interviews with trans refugees, the research introduces the concept of (b)ordering as a tool to analyze the practices at play in relegating trans refugees to a queer necropolis, a city of death. The study identifies three main (b)ordering mechanisms: spatial and symbolic control, the performance of worthiness and authenticity, and the instrumentalization of arbitrariness as systemic negligence. Rather than offering safety, the asylum system seems to demand conformity to a normative understanding of gender and refugeehood, which results in the isolation of those non-conforming subjects. Finally, this research illustrates the tactics of survival used by trans refugees while revealing the structural contradictions of the asylum system in the Netherlands, which prides itself for its progressiveness regarding LGBTQ+ rights, and yet relegates trans refugees to landscapes of abjection.