This article examines the role of food practices -namely, the sharing of food - in the production of political solidarity within spaces of LGBTQ + activism. We suggest that focusing on food practices can help us understand how care and pleasure underpin the politics of solidarity. Drawing on two multi-site qualitative research projects on transnational activism around LGBTQ cultural and political events in Poland and a comparative study of queer film festivals as activism in different localities and geopolitical sites in Europe, we argue that food practices play a key role within the queer social reproduction of event-based transnational solidarities through a range of interconnected effects: Food practices (a) are constitutive of community creating withing transnational activist networks; (b) are tied in with the cultivation of hospitality and care in activist contexts; (c) allow for the experience of mutual pleasure that opens up possibilities for meaningful and joyful encounters. Following Elspeth Probyn's argument that thinking about food in relation to sex can help us understand the everyday ethics of living and value of pleasure in forging social connections, the paper shifts the emphasis of our understanding LGBTQ + activism from militancy or interest-based or rights-focused contestations towards emotional, embodied and material social reproduction. The paper further provides a significant contribution to current debates on queer social reproduction that tend to focus either on practices localised in the home or in the city, by showing how queer social reproduction operates in transnational networks and circuits, involving more transitory and temporary spaces.

Lagerman, Julia. 2023. A Nationalist Contradiction: Homonationalism and Nationalist Anti-LGBTQ Politics and Activism in Sweden. PhD thesis. Uppsala University: Department of Human Geography.

A vast literature on the home across sociology, human geography and cognate disciplines has mapped out home as a messy conceptual terrain. Critical perspectives have theorised home as simultaneously imaginative and material, and argued for the importance to pay attention to both dimensions. Following in this tradition, empirical research has explored how 'home' is understood, imagined and experienced in everyday life, and how imagery and experiences of home are inflected by class, race/ethnicity, migrancy, gender, sexuality, age and able-bodiness. In the literature on home, however, migrancy and sexuality are rarely brought together. This article advances existing debates on the home though an intersectional exploration of the home/migration/sexuality nexus, drawing on research with queer migrants from Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) living in Scotland. Methodologically, the article draws on photo diaries and photo elicitation interviews to explore queer migrants' sense of home: an approach that allows us to untangle the spatial, material, imaginary, affective and temporal dimensions of home. Empirically, we show how both migrancy and sexuality inform our participants' complex experiences and understandings of home. Conceptually, the article brings into conversation literatures on the migrant and the queer home, which have hitherto been largely separate, and proposes ways to advance the exploration of the home/migration/sexuality nexus.

This paper examines how a critical examination of the queer politics of comparison can inform queer film festival research. The discussion of the queer politics of comparison draws on a qualitative study of five queer film festivals in different European cultural geopolitical contexts which examined these festivals as sites for the reproduction of queer visibility, solidarity and queer space. We propose an approach of relational comparison within a framework that highlights regional contextuality. We further argue that queer approaches to comparative research should be informed by postcolonial critiques that challenge hegemonic notions of temporality and spatiality within political geographical imaginaries of Europe. We therefore suggest that poststructural and postcolonial informed perspectives on 'cultural translation' are key to the queering of comparison. Such an approach to cultural translation critical self-reflexivity within a transversal hermeneutics that at the same time pay attention to geopolitics, positionality and difference.

Despite their global proliferation, queer film festivals, like film festivals more broadly, are somewhat understudied within the social sciences. This is despite scholarship within film studies that argues that they are significant sites of queer collectivity and sociality. This article examines queer film festivals as sites for the production of community and queer bonds. The authors argue that questions of age, temporality and intergenerationality are central to discourses of community mobilized by festival organizers. The article draws on empirical material from a qualitative study of the GAZE International LGBT Festival in Dublin – which formed part of a larger comparative study of the cultural activist politics of queer film festivals in Europe. Ken Plummer has argued for a greater appreciation of the role of time and generation within sexuality studies. Age, temporality and intergenerationality emerged as important issues within interviews conducted with organizers and volunteers at the festival. The analysis of these issues focuses on three key themes: (1) GAZE as a site of intergenerational community; (2) GAZE as a site of remembrance; and (3) demography and the sustainability of the festival. The article argues that the festival provides a distinctive site of intergenerational queer bonds; and that despite the creation of transnational spaces and discourses, references to the nation and national identity remain central to bonding experiences at the festival.

This chapter examines the transnational dimensions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics and activism in Poland. It focuses on the discussion of transnational activist solidarities together by focusing on their spatial politics. It traces the main contexts for the project, and discusses how one's undertook the research. The chapter focuses on one key aspect of the project namely the concept of solidarity, how it has been theorised in relation to sexual politics in Poland and how the concept was understood, articulated and deployed by the informants in the project. It advances the argument that an understanding of transnational politics in Poland, and other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, is seriously limited by the operation of an East/West dichotomy. The chapter suggests that solidarity discourses both support and are supported by specific geopolitical imaginaries such as the notion of an East/West binary. Such discourse then reinforces Western European cultural hegemony in sexual politics.

This article examines what a critical focus on the region can contribute to the study of LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is argued that a regional lens can challenge methodological nationalism in existing studies of European LGBTQ politics. It can also contribute towards a broader examination of the politics of scale in relation to the Europeanisation of LGBTQ politics. The article discusses alternative theoretical approaches to the region and examines the queer affinities of these approaches in turn. The argument proceeds to consider the political effects of these alternative theoretical framings of the region in contemporary LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is suggested that a regional critical lens can foreground sub-national and transnational regional political formations, which otherwise may be overlooked in an uncritical focus on the national scale of LGBTQ politics. A regional perspective can also help unsettle Anglo-American framings of sexual politics.

AbstractUrban studies have recently witnessed a revival of critical interest in comparison, situated within a broader postcolonial critique of the parochialism of (Western) urban theory. However, recent discussions of the comparative within urban studies have tended to neglect sexual politics, despite the emergence of a significant body of work on the queer politics of comparison. Urban research on sexualities has tended to focus on the territorialisation of same‐sex desire and identifications in territories such as gay villages or neighbourhoods and has often overlooked the sexual politics of networked relations and connections between cities. Although relational approaches to urbanism have been adopted in this field, there has been little explicit engagement with the comparative, which remains largely under‐theorised. This paper considers the usefulness of Kevin Ward's work on ‘relational comparison’ in informing research agendas on the sexual politics of (transnational) connections between cities. It argues that the use of relational comparison can help interrogate the transnational politics of knowledge production in the field and can help in opening up new research agendas.

This article examines the role of city twinning as a device for conducting transnational activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics. It focuses on the city of Leiden in the Netherlands, examining how the city's twinning links with the cities of Torun in Poland and Oxford in the UK have been used at different times as a device to mobilize transnational solidarities with LGBTQ people outside of the Netherlands. Drawing on qualitative semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ activists in Leiden as part of a wider study of transnational LGBTQ activism in Europe, I seek to understand how twinning links are used to forge sustainable solidarities both across national boundaries and within Leiden. I suggest that relational comparisons about the status and treatment of sexual dissidents in Leiden and its twin cities are central to the production of these solidarities. While twinning has significant potential as a device for the production of sustainable transnational LGBTQ activism, I also suggest that it can be used to advance problematic geo-temporalities about the relative 'progressiveness' or 'backwardness' of LGBTQ politics in specific cities.

While the growth of visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) political struggles in Poland, and illiberal neo-populist reactions to the queer presence in public space and the public sphere since 2004 has spawned much academic debate, there has been less critical discussion of LGBTQ politics in relation to class and neoliberalism. This article seeks to make two key contributions to understandings of the relationships between gender, sexuality and political economy. The first is recognition of the tensions and contradictions inherent within practices of neoliberalisation. It is suggested that neoliberalism can be both generative and hostile towards LGBTQ politics. Processes of neoliberalisation produce queer winners and losers, and it is suggested that if sexually progressive alternatives to neoliberalism are to be developed, they need to recognise the tensions and contradictions inherent within processes of neoliberalism. In so doing, the class dimensions of neoliberal sexualities need to be made visible and examined critically. Secondly, it is argued that discussions of classed sexualities are often framed within specific national contexts, and thereby fail to recognise the transnational dimensions of classed sexualities. Discussions of the sexual politics of neoliberalism are often grounded in Anglo-American contexts and sometimes fail to recognise how neoliberal sexualities are framed outside of the West. These two key objectives are addressed by an examination of the economic and class dimensions of contemporary LGBTQ political struggles in Poland—specifically the organisation of marches for equality and tolerance within Polish cities since 2001.

This article examines the relationship between East-West migration in Europe and activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics in Poland. EU accession in 2004 was accompanied by an intensification of homophobia in Polish political discourse particularly associated with neo-populist Radical Right parties such as Law and Justice and the League of Polish Families. Marches for the tolerance and equality of lesbians, gay men and other sexual dissidents were banned or attacked by far-right counter-protestors in a number of Polish cities. This article examines the connections between East-West (and other) migrant flows to and from Poland and the emergence of transnational activist networks forged in response to these events. These migratory flows facilitated the forging of these networks and activist solidarities, generating material and affective support. The discussion of these issues draws on interviews with activists participating in these networks. Our argument shows that there is concern among activists about how to represent the post-accession East-West migration of lesbian and gay Poles and the extent to which this is due to homophobic oppression in Poland. Moreover we find that there is considerable investment in the potential for East-West migration to transform the attitudes of socially conservative Polish citizens.

Age, temporality and intergenerationality have often been neglected in debates on intersectionality within sexuality studies. This article contributes towards these debates by examining how age and generation operate within transnational activism around LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer politics) in Poland. Drawing on interviews with activists in Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, this article examines age and generation as significant aspects of activists' positioning with regard to each other and to archives of political experiences and discursive repertoires. The article argues that age and generation matter on the level of personal inter-subjectivity and are frequently rationalised by recourse to different national and local narratives of LGBTQ movement histories.

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the locations studied. They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations.

This article explores the overlaps between tourism and forms of political activism. The authors examine the politics of hospitality and solidarity within transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activist networks formed to combat homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in Poland. Based on interviews with participants in the March for Tolerance in Krakow – the city’s annual tolerance and equality march – the authors argue that questions of hospitality were significant in the formation of activist networks related to this event. Conflicts between Polish and foreign activists were often expressed through the language of hospitality. We discuss the labour of producing hospitality and the ethics of recognition of hospitality as a form of solidarity. The failure on parts of activists to inhibit roles recognized as central to the practice of hospitality in an adequate manner led to disenchantment and even disengagement of activists from the event. The discussion of hospitality as a form of solidarity contributes towards existing understandings of both solidarity tourism and queer tourism.