The Cost of Being Trans: Administrative Burden, Citizen-State Interaction, and Transgender People in the US

Abstract

This dissertation explores how transgender people in the US experience administrative burdens. Across three chapters, I explore the learning, compliance, and psychological costs that trans and gender-expansive people face when applying for safety net programs, interrogating how policymakers often use norms to create burdens, which in turn create and reify norms further. I also look at how trans and gender-expansive people cope interacting with government workers, asking, when do burdens become sources of violence? Employing a mixed-method approach, I first survey 465 transgender adults residing in the US who considered applying or applied to SNAP, Medicaid, and/or Unemployment Insurance. I then interview a subset of 43 survey participants to better understand their experiences of administrative burdens during citizen-state interactions. Taken together, this mixed-method dissertation offers one of the first in-depth studies of transgender Americans' experiences of administrative burden. The first goal of this dissertation is to build a foundation for the field of public administration to better understand what gender is and how it functions. Ultimately, my aim for this dissertation is that it inspires future administrative burden and public administration scholars to understand that gender is not only an independent variable, but also an ever-changing label that can determine who is counted, who is deserving, and who is pushed to the margins.