Missing and Murdered: Women of Color, Transgender, and Indigenous People
(Session Organizer) Annie Isabel Fukushima, University of Utah; (Presider) Annie Isabel Fukushima,
University of Utah
This thematic session grapples with a social phenomenon of missing and murdered people – in particular, how state‐based violence coheres with gender‐based violence in what is referred to as feminicidio, femicide, feminicide and murder. This session will offer an analysis through state comparisons; in particular, the Mexican and Guatemalan state’s response to feminicidio with that of the U.S. and Canadian state’s response to femicide, to underscore the role of the state in responding to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. And in particular, what is known about death through the organizational responses, such as the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. This session will also provide an intersectional analysis that reconciles the complexity of sex/gender/sexuality systems as they relate to gender‐based violence and murder, through the exemplar of the murder of transgender people in the United States. Panelists answer the following questions: What are the patterns and phenomena that a sociology of gender may facilitate to better understand gender‐based violence that leads people to be considered “missing” or “murdered”? How do states respond to missing and murdered people, and what are the role of social structures, specialized and traditional justice systems in facilitating (in)action? How may sociological engagement with systems and social movements, through the subject of missing and murdered people, deepen methodology and sociological inquiry? This panel brings together leading social scientists whose contributions bridge together sociology of the law, transnational feminist theory, legal studies, feminist anthropology, and intersectionality. The panelists work from various methodological and analytical approaches.
- Missing from the count: Visualizing the invisible victim in fem[in]icide data, Myrna Dawson, University of Guelph
- Intersectionality and Impunity: A comparative analysis of feminicidio in Mexico and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, Paulina Garcia del Moral, University of Guelph
- Guatemala and Mam indigenous refugee women, gender‐based violence and feminicidio, and access to justice in Guatemala and in U.S. immigration courts, Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon
- Unequal Risk: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Murders of Transgender People, Laurel Westbrook, Grand Valley State University
Annie Isabel Fukushima 