Transgender negotiations of precarity: Contested spaces of higher education

Abstract

We use feminist and queer theorisations of precarity as emotional and embodied to explore how trans people experience and negotiate university campus spaces in North East England. Through analysis of 15 interviews conducted with university students and staff, we highlight how precarity is lived and felt through an exploration of the ways in which different spaces of the campus become contexts of hope, comfort, and belonging, as well as anxiety, fear, and violence. We detail the specific ways in which university spaces can come to shape feelings of precariousness and how these are relational to experiences of being trans in the wider city. We conclude by highlighting what an emotional and felt approach to precarity can offer geographers interested in power, marginalisation, and place.