Families: Transnational and Global Perspectives

This entry explores ways that trans and gender-diverse people create and sustain families and navigate family pressures, with a focus on transnational and global contexts that are underrepresented in transgender family studies. Definitions of family, like definitions and expressions of gender, are numerous and fluid. Scholars have long recognized the importance of chosen family and fictive kin—family relations that are not based on blood or marriage—among LGBTQ+ communities, Black American communities, recent immigrants to the United States, and other groups. More heteronormative models of family are also culture and context specific. For example, in some cultures, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins are a part of the core family, while in other cultures and contexts, these relationships are considered more distant or “extended.” Some societies distinguish ...