Conference Program

Educational institutions often function as sites of coloniality, where Eurocentric and cis-heteronormative standards dictate the boundaries of “acceptable” bodies and identities (Foucault, 1975; Mayo & Blackburn, 2019; Sánchez Sáinz, 2019). For trans* individuals belonging to racialised minorities (BPOC), the school environment becomes a complex nexus of intersectional oppressions, where they experience the dichotomy of intersectional invisibility (gender identity) and hypervisibility (racialised background) (Hennekam & Dumazert, 2023).

This contribution examines these intersections through a secondary analysis of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) LGBTIQ Survey III (2024), focusing on a weighted subsample of 23,101 trans* respondents, aged 15-30, who attended school in the EU. Within the sample, 1,118 identify as a minority based on ethnicity or migrant background, and 576 identify as a minority based on skin colour.

Drawing on the dialogue between queer pedagogy and decoloniality (Mayo & Blackburn, 2019; Sánchez Sáinz, 2019), the study utilises binary logistic regression models to investigate racialisation, specifically based on skin colour, affected and still affects trans* individuals’ school environment, while accounting for the compounding effects of region, gender identity, sexual orientation and age.

The results reveal a significant vulnerability surplus among racialised respondents. In fact, white individuals exhibit a significantly lower likelihood of actively avoiding gender expression through their physical appearance (OR=0.77; p<.05) compared to their BPOC peers. This finding suggests that the intersection of transphobia and skin-colour-based racism exerts a disciplinary pressure that forces BPOC trans* students into strategic invisibility as a survival mechanism.

Furthermore, the logistic regression on school climate confirms that being white is a protective factor, as they are less likely to experience a hostile school environment (OR = 0.79; p<.05) compared to their BPOC counterparts. While dimensions such as access to gendered spaces and direct hostility by peers and teachers appear to affect all trans* students, the general school climate and the freedom of gender expression remain deeply affected by racism due to hyper visibility.

The authors argue that these findings demonstrate a form of normativity (Foucault, 1975), biopower (Foucault, 1978), and epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007), whereby the school system’s inability to accommodate intersectional identities forces BPOC trans* individuals into invisibility. To support all trans* people, institutional practices must move beyond superficial “acceptance” that does not take into consideration intersectionalities, addressing the structural racism, cisnormativity and binarism that continue to configure learning environments as sites of exclusion rather than spaces of recognition.