LGBT Activism: Strategies, Actions and Discourses in Comparative Perspective

While "gay issues" have become prominent on the political agendas of Western countries over the last 30 years or so, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals are still repressed or at least widely silenced in many regions of the world. In part of Western Europe and North America, LGBT activism has successfully politicised issues such as same-sex marriage, adoption rights for same-sex couples, or the rights of transgender and intersex people. In most of Eastern Europe and the wider post-communist sphere, by contrast, sexual minorities are still at best invisible, stigmatised and controversial, at worst brutally repressed, criminalised and forced into underground activism. In other areas of the world, some sexual minorities have successfully fought for selective rights (such as the hijra – transgender people - in Pakistan who earned voting rights as "third sex" in 2012), while sexual minorities more generally remain excluded. This section aims to offer an arena of reflection on the political fate and influence of "gay issues" across the world, with an emphasis on LGBT groups' mobilisation and their relationship to the state, particularly in Europe and the post-communist sphere. More specifically, we would like to thematise two key dimensions of LGBT activism: LGBT activism and the state Firstly, we would like to raise questions regarding LGBT activism and its relations to the state and, more generally, structural conditions, for instance: How has LGBT activism in the Western world adjusted to the incorporation of some of their claims into the legal framework of their respective states? How do they engage with, and possible oppose, dominant gender discourses? What internal divisions of the LGBT(QIA) "community" have been pacified and which ones fuelled through institutional "normalisation"? How have LGBT movements in Eastern Europe adapted to the democratic transition? How do LGBT activists try to subvert, circumvent or adjust to repression and stigmatisation? How do changes in structural conditions impact on individual and collective LGBT identities, and how do boundaries of citizenship get displaced and redefined in the process? LGBT mobilisation and internal dynamics Secondly, we wish to trigger discussions on LGBT groups and movements themselves, their mobilisation strategies and their internal dynamics in different contexts. We invite discussions around issues such as: How do strategies and discourses adopted by LGBT groups to promote their issues differ between Western, Central and Eastern/South-eastern European countries? How have such groups challenged opponents? What sub-groups of the community have possibly been further marginalised? How and around what issues do LGBT activists in countries where sexual minorities remain repressed attempt to mobilise? What internal, transnational, or international channels and networks do they rely upon? How do they relate to women's/feminist movements? In what ways do global LGBT activism and the European frame support them (or not)? How have revolutions and regime transitions supported or hindered their mobilisation? These and similar questions will be at the centre of this section that will speak to scholars working on LGBT issues from a range of perspectives (among others, gender, collective action, public policy) and methodologies but it will also be of interest for those working on issues of democracy, policy-making mechanisms, public discourses and contentious politics. Moreover, the sections offers the opportunity of a genuine cross-European view based on Western, Eastern and Central European diversities of contexts in regard to LGBT issues. We invite papers and panels on any of the above-mentioned (or related) issues. Papers that make an empirical contribution to the study of LGBT activism, and in particular comparative papers, are especially welcome. Case studies and conceptual or theoretical papers are also welcome, as long as they make an effort to situate their cases in a comparative perspective, respectively to link their theoretical or methodological arguments to the empirical study of LGBT activism. With this section we would like to contribute to furthering the research agenda on LGBT movements and activism beyond Western Europe and in a comparative perspective. Dr Lea Sgier is assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. She has worked on gender quotas, gender equality policies, citizenship and dementia policy from a gender perspective, and has taught courses on gender&politics at CEU and at the University of Geneva. Her other field of interest is qualitative methodology. She co-convened a section on research methods for gender and politics at the last European conference on politics and gender (2013), and is a co-chair of the ECPR Standing Group Political Methodology. Dr Simone Baglioni is Reader in Politics at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), Glasgow, UK. Before joining GCU in 2010, he was a lecturer and researcher at various universities in Europe (Florence, Geneva, Neuchâtel and Milan-Bocconi). He has done extensive research on issues of civil society and social movements as well as on social exclusion, primarily through EU funding. Simone is about to start a new EU FP7 project which investigates social enterprises and collective action across different policy fields in several European countries. He has published on civil society and collective action in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Mobilization, and The International Journal of Social Welfare.