Beyond Positive Intentions: Seeking Well-Being and Equity for LGBTQ+ Newcomer Women and Other Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Newcomers
This report has been exclusive produced by Access Alliance. Please visit their web page and their original resource for the full report.
Executive Summary
This report provides information to support the social services sector in pursuing well-being and equity for LGBTQ+ newcomer women and other trans and gender non-conforming newcomers.
Research Data
The data for this report includes interviews/focus groups with LGBTQ+ newcomer women and other trans and gender non-conforming newcomers, and a diversity of professionals who work with them.
Findings
Systemic Barriers:
• Injustice in the refugee claim process
• Economic deprivation/insecurity
• Negative health & compromised access to healthcare
• Insufficient & inadequate shelter services
• Unaffordable housing & housing discrimination
• Social isolation & exclusion
Service Barriers:
• Embedded assumptions about the ‘typical’ client
• Staff apathy & neglect
• Failure to advocate against injustice
• Failure to recognize client strength
• Austerity & the diminishment of the social safety net
Recommendations
Government Level:
• Actualize economic justice
• Restore the social safety net
• Actualize migrant justice
Service Level:
• Reframe responsibility
• Diversify staff & challenge structural employment
discrimination
• Invest in decent work & fair wages
• Structurally integrate client perspectives into service
delivery
• Unpack assumptions & undo service barrier
•Expand (unofficial) service
• Prioritize the systematically under-served
• Explicitly indicate allyship & safety
• Enable service users to self-organize & provide
exclusive spaces
• Engage in, and empower, advocacy work
• Practice humility
Conclusion
The LGBTQ+ newcomer women and other trans and gender non-conforming newcomers interviewed for this project exhibited strength, intelligence, adaptability, creativity, and resilience in the context of migration, displacement, isolation, and poverty. Ultimately, well-being for them demands social justice – dismantling systems of exclusion and denial, to enable their safety and security. As social service providers, we not only need to be concerned about the services we deliver within our organizations, but we also need to understand, and be responsive to, the broader context of their experience.