Surviving, Belonging, and Being Recognized: A Critical Reappropriation of Quality of Life in Older Trans Women in Chile

What conceptual frameworks can adequately account for the well-being of people historically excluded from dominant definitions of a "good life?" This article addresses this question through a qualitative study of trans aging, based on in-depth interviews with ten members of Sindicato Afrodita, Chile's only organization of older trans women. Given the limitations of conventional Quality of Life (QoL) instruments for lives shaped by institutional exclusion, the study reappropriates the QoL model of Schalock and Verdugo. Based on thematic analysis, the model's eight dimensions are reorganized into five situated domains: civic well-being and recognition; bodily well-being and identity; material well-being and dignity; relational well-being and community legacy; and emotional well-being and sustained agency. Drawing on feminist and queer/crip perspectives, the analysis shows that well-being in trans aging is neither an individual condition nor a fixed normative endpoint, but a relational, affective, and political practice. Chosen care networks compensate for state absence; the body operates as both archive of medical exclusion and ongoing site of identity; and community emerges as the primary infrastructure of recognition and agency. The study identifies four structural tensions within the original model-individualism, linearity, normative baseline assumptions, and ableism-with implications for critical gerontology and public policy.