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<p>This study examines how transgender individuals in Punjab, Pakistan, encounter policing not as a protective institution but as a site of recurring harm. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we explore in-depth interviews with 15 transgender participants whose everyday interactions with law enforcement were marked by misgendering, mockery, arbitrary detention, coercive sexual encounters, and physical violence. These violations were not isolated; they formed a pattern of symbolic and structural domination that eroded institutional trust and produced a chronic sense of civic abandonment. Framed through Institutional Trust Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Labelling Theory, and critical traditions including Queer and Feminist Criminology, the analysis reveals how the transgender body is criminalized, policed, and rendered hyper-visible as a threat yet invisible as a victim. At the same time, participants resisted this dehumanization through silence, advocacy, ritualized strategies of survival, and engagement with reform efforts. The study not only highlights how policing in the Global South operates through colonial residues and gendered hierarchies but also foregrounds transgender voices as agents of transformative justice. Ultimately, it calls for reimagining justice not through procedural reforms alone, but through the lived truths and reparative agency of those historically silenced.</p>

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Perceived as a Threat: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Transgender-Police Relations and Institutional Betrayal in Pakistan

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年2月18日

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  • Muhammad Zainul Abidin,
  • Azrina Husin

摘要

This study examines how transgender individuals in Punjab, Pakistan, encounter policing not as a protective institution but as a site of recurring harm. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we explore in-depth interviews with 15 transgender participants whose everyday interactions with law enforcement were marked by misgendering, mockery, arbitrary detention, coercive sexual encounters, and physical violence. These violations were not isolated; they formed a pattern of symbolic and structural domination that eroded institutional trust and produced a chronic sense of civic abandonment. Framed through Institutional Trust Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Labelling Theory, and critical traditions including Queer and Feminist Criminology, the analysis reveals how the transgender body is criminalized, policed, and rendered hyper-visible as a threat yet invisible as a victim. At the same time, participants resisted this dehumanization through silence, advocacy, ritualized strategies of survival, and engagement with reform efforts. The study not only highlights how policing in the Global South operates through colonial residues and gendered hierarchies but also foregrounds transgender voices as agents of transformative justice. Ultimately, it calls for reimagining justice not through procedural reforms alone, but through the lived truths and reparative agency of those historically silenced.