Recognising, protecting and measuring: the institutional construction of the trans subject in European governance (2015–2025)

This article examines how European institutions construct the trans subject within contemporary governance frameworks. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of institutional documents produced within the 2015–2025 policy cycle by the European Commission, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Institute for Gender Equality and the Council of Europe, the article identifies three interconnected logics of trans governance: protection, administrative recognition and statistical measurement. It argues that these logics expand the institutional visibility of trans populations while also structuring the limits of what becomes actionable as a trans policy issue. Trans subjects become intelligible as vulnerable, documentable and measurable, whereas labour, care and social reproduction remain comparatively marginal. The article contributes to debates on European LGBTIQAPN + governance, trans politics and feminist policy analysis by theorising European trans governance as an architecture of institutional intelligibility.