At the Thresholds: Labor Organizing as Travesti-Trans Formal Workers in Argentina

Due to historical exclusions in family, educational, and labor environments in Argentina, it has been difficult for trans, travesti and non-binary (TTNB) people to participate, organize, or even be imagined—by others or by ourselves—as part of the formal workforce and its social protections. In 2012, the country passed a Gender Identity Law, heralded around the world as pioneering, that formalized the legal recognition of self-identified gender and access to transitional health services. But exclusion in formal employment has only just begun to be repaired and reversed through labor quotas that reserve 1 percent of jobs in the public sector for travesti-trans people. Thanks to continuous struggles, these quotas have existed in different provinces and municipalities since 2015, and on a national level since 2020. Centering the experience of Zaguán, an organization of TTNB workers of the Argentine state, we consider the following questions: What are the political implications of acting at the intersection of TTNB people and formal work? How has it been possible to enact the defense of the TTNB community as part of union agendas, bringing together universes that seemed incompatible? In what way does the organizing of formal TTNB workers expand public imaginaries about the relationship between TTNB people and labor? And what are the collective challenges of organizing above and beyond individualism and identity politics?