Constructing Anthropological Expertise: Community Support and Legal Partnership in Transgender Cases

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anthropologists working with marginalised populations in need of legal representation have faced challenges spanning epistemological, methodological and ethical questions. In the provision of evidence to legal-administrative processes, how do we overcome some of the obstacles in solving these problems? In this paper, we discuss our experience working through the case of a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico in the United States and the case of socio-cultural and legal concerns of a transgender youth in Los Angeles. The three partners in this paper are a socio-cultural anthropologist (Ngin), an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles (Yeh) and a community professional who works extensively with undocumented college students (Borjon). In Ngin’s preparation of the cultural argument for the asylum case of the transgender person, it was Borjon’s network of community contacts that provided the additional evidence for the case. As the case was delayed in the legal process, Attorney Yeh’s legal insight explains the best course of action for the petitioner. In the second case of the young transgender youth, we discussed the precarity of the youth’s situation and the possibility of socio-legal protection. In our analysis of these two cases, we discussed how we arrived at legally sound concepts with evidence supported by anthropological analytical methods while ensuring transparency of the provenance of evidence to meet ethical principles. Through these consultations in the construction of anthropological expertise, we also hope to decolonise expertise.