ANTILGBT · Anti-LGBT organising and its transnational dynamics: The case of the Balkans

Anti-LGBT organising and its transnational dynamics: The case of the Balkans

Starting from the early 2010s Europe has seen an increasing mobilisation against the changes that would bring about greater emancipation of LGBTQ people, such as marriage equality. This mobilisation appeared in the countries which have already broadened the scope of LGBTQ rights, such as France, Germany, and Spain, as well as in the states which have been less prone to make such changes, such as Poland and Croatia. For example, in France, the movement called La manif pour tous (Protest is for everybody) drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Paris and other French cities during 2012 and 2013 to protest against gender neutral marriage. At the same time, in the countries such as Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, and, most recently, Romania, the referendums against same-sex marriages have been initiated. The presence of shared visual appearance and discursive repertoire in different national contexts, accompanied by the joint international events, such as annual World Congress of Families, suggests the presence of transnational exchanges and alliances between the actors from Europe, U.S., and Russia. This research project starts from the premise that active resistance to LGBTQ rights represents an example of anti-emancipatory practice, which prevents the improvement of life conditions for citizens whose life styles differ from the dominant norms of gender and sexuality. It is based on the conviction that to effectively address these challenges, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the rhetoric, strategies, and the ways this mobilisation operates at the intersection of transnational and national scales. The overall aim of this project is to contribute to this endeavour by providing an in-depth analysis of the anti-LGBTQ mobilisation and its transnational dimension in the new countries of South East Europe, namely, Croatia and Serbia, where resistance to LGBTQ rights has been particularly strong and, so far, largely underexplored. The research has focused on four particular questions: 1) What kind of rhetoric and strategies have been implemented by anti-LGBTQ actors in Croatia and Serbia?; 2) How this mobilisation affects the existing regimes of liberal democracy; 3) What kind of international networks can be traced in relation to this mobilisation?; and 4) In what ways and to what extent this transnational anti-LGBTQ mobilisation both reflects and informs the structural shifts in contemporary geopolitics?

Data: CORDIS, © European Union