“Lá vem o advogado das travas”: agentes jurídicos na defesa dos direitos da população LGBTI+

Abstract

The disposition of this work arose from the need to address another dimension of the rights of the LGBTI+ population, focused on legal agents, the main mediators of the rights and needs of LGBTI+ individuals before institutions. The proposal of this research is to investigate the life trajectories of legal agents who defend the rights and interests of the LGBTI+ population, understanding their motivations, identifications, and experiences in dealing with the theme in their legal practice, as well as to study the strategies for monitoring the demands of the LGBTI+ population assisted by them before notaries, police stations, local public facilities, class-focused organizations, and the judiciary. By exploring the legal practices of these agents, it will be possible to mobilize critical perspectives, reflections, and interpretations of social actions directed at institutions, based on the relational flows between the inhabitants of the legal world, the state's coercive apparatus, social movements, operators of public facilities, and other agents involved in the pursuit of rights for the LGBTI+ community. To try to account for the proposed objectives, I use qualitative research, approaching the problem from the combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, application of legal agent profile forms, consultation of legal, judicial, and digital documents, in addition to news and manifestations from institutions involved in the cases addressed. Throughout the three chapters that compose this thesis, I sought to explore the biographies and identities of the political agents, as well as the factors that led them to act as specialists in the rights of the LGBTI+ population; in the second chapter, I explored cases that involved the rectification of civil registration for trans people, recording the events in order to make explicit the practice and discourses adopted by the legal agents along the bureaucratic paths; in the third and final chapter, I address cases of LGBTphobic violence, analyzing the conduction of the cases by the legal agents, their interactions with clients, colleagues, and institutions, in the search for justice for their clients. The analysis of the cases from a local perspective offers clues to understand systemic and complex processes of unequal distribution of rights, which particularly affect the LGBTI+ population, and reveal the relevance of legal agents as subjects of social transformation, in alliance with other legal agents, civil society, and social movements.