Nan Seuffert

Reflections on transgender immigration

Recently, the Human Rights Commission of New Zealand has conducted an inquiry that has officially documented ‘the obstacles to dignity, equality and security for trans people’. The Australian Human Rights Commission has also recently conducted a sex and gender diversity project, and in 2006 the Equalities Review in the United Kingdom commissioned the largest research project ever untaken globally on trans people’s lives, reported in Engendered Penalties: Transgender and Transsexual People’s Experiences of Inequality and Discrimination. This article reflects on the implications of the issues raised by these recent reports and research for transgendered people immigrating to and from New Zealand. It also raises some parallel issues for Australia.

Occupy, Financial Fraternity and Gender Ventriloquism

A prominent response to the Occupy movement has been the question “What does Occupy want?” What might we understand about this persistent questioning of the Occupy movement? How might we begin to think about the Occupy movement as resistance to the culture of Wall Street and politicians in recent decades? This article provides some thoughts on the conceptual and discursive relationships between the causes of the global financial crisis, including the neoliberal consensus on financial regulation, and some of the dynamics that have arisen in relation to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In particular, it suggests that Jacques Derrida’s analysis of the tradition of fraternity in modern concepts of democracy, and feminist ideas on “speaking for others” may assist with understanding the relational gender dynamics of this regulatory consensus, the masculinity of the financial industry and the derivatives trading rooms, and one way in which dominant discourses are gendering the Occupy movement.

Haunting national boundaries: LBGTI asylum seekers

Two areas of scholarship on asylum seekers and detention camps rarely consider the position of LBGTI asylum seekers: the first is legal scholarship on asylum seeker non-entrée regime policies of ‘excision’ and ‘exile’, and the second is scholarship theorising the ‘bare life’, or lack of political and legal rights, and related issues encountered by asylum seekers at the boundary of the nation. This article contributes to and extends these bodies of scholarship by reading LBGTI asylum seekers into Australias recent asylum seeker non-entrée polices of ‘excision’ and ‘exile’. Using scholarship and reports produced internationally, it raises issues for LBGTI asylum seekers in the implementation of these policies. These analyses highlight some of the different forms in which ‘bare life’ might be manifested in the space of inclusion/exclusion at the boundary of the nation: ‘bare life’ is not a monolithic category.

Vitoria’s On the Indians, Legal Subjectivity and the Right to Travel

This article analyses configurations of legal subjectivity, sexuality and the right to travel at the inception of international law. It commences a project on a genealogy of the legal subject of th...

Diversity policies meet the competency movement: towards reshaping law firm partnership models for the future

ABSTRACT Globalisation, commercialisation, and economic pressures following the global financial crisis have produced a ‘new normal’ for the practice of law in private firms, requiring reassessment of the range of skills necessary for success. Scholarship in the ‘competencies movement’ has responded to this need for skills reassessment. At the same time, research and scholarship focused on increasing diversity and inclusion in law firms has blossomed. However, little attention has been paid to analysing synergies in the competencies and diversity movements, and there have been calls for more collaborative research between academics, firms and professional bodies in response to issues of diversity and inclusion. This article presents a collaborative research project between law firms, the Women Lawyers Association of New South Wales, and the Legal Intersections Research Centre at the University of Wollongong on current best practices in diversity in large Australian law firms. It argues that such collaborative projects, with a focus on synergies between the competencies and diversities movements, provide the greatest potential for reshaping law firm practice and partnership models to respond to issues of advancement, attrition, and lack of re-engagement, particularly by women in law firms.