Pasifika people of transgender experience in employment: Safety and personal resilience

Abstract

Pasifika people of transgender experience are exposed to multiple levels of systematic injustice because of New Zealand’s imperialist social structure. A system that created, and continues to reproduce, unsafe workplaces for people of transgender experience Resulting in precarious effects around job security, and a heavy reliance on their personal resilience to survive. Posing the question, how do we create safe, inclusive and resilience enhancing work environments for people of transgender experience? We conceptualised that Third-Places, places outside of work and home where people could foster wellbeing, was an avenue to explore Pasifika people of transgender experience’s safety. To understand their realities, we used biographical interviews and photo-elicitation to narrate and illustrate the stories of five people – Sonya, Teuila, Lena, Angie and Li. The overall research methodology was guided by the principles of Teu Le Vā; praxis in accordance with Talanoa; and interpretations based on three indigenous frameworks – Fa’afaletui, Kakala and Tivaevae – alongside intersectional and Third-Place concepts. Data collection consisted of an initial biographical interview and workplace mapping exercise, a two-week photography period followed by a final photo elicitation interview. Three cases were produced: Sonya and Teuila; Lena and Angie; and Li. Their journeys inform us that the insistence of heterosexist, cissexist transphobic attitudes dominate safety experiences. To continue living in these places, they identified people as critical determinants of safety experience; and contributory to their resilience as resistors of cissexism, heterosexism and transphobia. Therefore, the underlying colonial histories that create notions of difference and essentialism need to be dismantled and deconstructed; whereby disempowering environments can be recreated by those it immediately affects. In this case, Pasifika people of transgender experience.