Hermeneutical injustice at the border: the case of LGBTQ asylum claims
Asylum seekers fleeing their country of origin, hoping to find a new home, face multiple challenges, one of which is epistemic injustice. The asylum process is indeed typically and structurally at risk of epistemic injustice, in that officers who adjudicate asylum claims must do so by assessing and, to a certain extent, challenging the credibility of the claimants. In this talk I examine this issue by focusing on hermeneutical injustice in the adjudication of LGBTQ asylum claims, a case that proves particularly problematic for non-binary trans and bisexual claimants, who do not fit stereotyped social categories. The analysis will provide the ground for developing a new account of hermeneutical injustice based on the Wittgensteinian notion of hinges.