“We live at the crossroads”: Testimonios of Venezuelan transgender women navigating migration, intersectional violence, and resettlement in Lima, Peru

Latin America is experiencing one of the largest displacement crises in its history alongside some of the highest levels of lethal violence against transgender (trans) women globally. Yet the migration trajectories of Venezuelan trans women navigating South–South displacement remain largely absent from regional migration scholarship. This study examines how overlapping systems of xenophobia, transphobia, and legal exclusion structure the mobility trajectories of Venezuelan trans women who migrated across Latin America and resettled in Peru. Between April 2022 and April 2023, we conducted 26 testimonios grounded in Latin American traditions of political witnessing to analyze how participants interpret and negotiate the sociopolitical forces shaping movement, precarity, and belonging across departure, transit, and resettlement. Participants described leaving Venezuela amid pervasive transphobic violence and economic collapse, mobility through informal routes intensified by border securitization and anti-Venezuelan hostility and arriving in Peru to confront nationality-based suspicion compounded by document mismatch, public misgendering, labor exclusion, and housing discrimination. Xenophobia shaped who was treated as suspect or disposable, while trans identity magnified scrutiny within policing, documentation regimes, and everyday bureaucratic encounters. Participants’ accounts revealed a visibility paradox in which being seen increased surveillance and harm, while concealment constrained access to protection. Findings demonstrate that vulnerability is not inherent to being trans or migrant but produced through institutional and informal arrangements that render gender identity and structural inequality administratively illegible. Centering Venezuelan trans women as political subjects is essential to advancing gender-affirming, rights-based migration governance in Latin America that promotes safety, dignity, and meaningful belonging.