Social occupational therapy and social justice: dialogues based on the demands of trans populations

Abstract

The main purpose of this text is to present reflections guided by the concept of social justice for social occupational therapy focusing on the demands of trans individuals brought up through research based on oral history and ethnographic techniques that aimed to understand how these people build and/or mobilize, throughout their life histories, strategies to face the conditions of marginalization experienced in their everyday lives, configuring certain ways of life. The understanding of these histories triggers an important debate in the field of social justice for social occupational therapy that, for us, dialogues with the idea of justice developed by Nancy Fraser, based on a conception that aims at economic redistribution and symbolic recognition. We consider that this is a powerful proposition, mainly because its foundation offers readings about social inequalities and possible ways of affirming existence. Therefore, if the praxis of social occupational therapy proposes to combine the social field technically and politically, it is necessary to understand the multiple ways of life, especially the contradictions that involve these realities, including the subjectivity, history, culture, and political relationships, among other elements in the everyday lives of people, to think/do together possibilities and ways to live better, based on social negotiations.