This article introduces the 'Pink Agenda' as a set of judicial, social and political instruments employed by both nation-states and international human rights institutions, such as the Council of Europe, to achieve some socio-political goals: on the one hand, the proactive promotion of specific lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities beyond Europe; on the other, the creation of a dichotomy between tolerant and intolerant countries within the borders of Europe. The successful enactment of the 'Pink Agenda' is achieved by building and reinforcing a concept of European Sexual Citizenship that is strongly homonationalist in nature. Through an analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, the article emphasises the way in which the homonationalist paradigm of sexual citizenship is applied to strengthen the divide between tolerant and intolerant member states and to suggest the existence of a difference between a queer-friendly 'West' and homophobic and transphobic non-western countries.
The Council of Europe (CoE) and its judicial body, the European Court of Human Rights, are at the forefront of the debate for the redefinition of the notion of ‘family’ in relation to the inclusion of same-sex couples. The recent jurisprudence has demonstrated a change in the Court’s approach to the question of what counts as a family, by terms of Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This much-anticipated development, nonetheless, begs the question of how the ‘right to marry and found a family’ might prove to be a privilege rather than a right. This article tries to shed light on the contradictions underpinning the expansion of the concept of family in the context of the CoE, suggesting the existence of a conflation of both heteronormative and homonormative narratives of kinship in the construction of a notion of the ‘family’ that encompasses same-sex couples.
This article uses the current ‘refugees/migrants crisis’ and Brexit as illustrative of the numerous challenges the European Union faces today when it comes to its identity and the construction of a ‘European citizenship’. By discussing the proliferation of borders on the European continent and by analysing the sociological significance of such proliferation, the article argues that Europe is experiencing an ontological and epistemological rather than an existential crisis that relates to its incapacity to acknowledge, and critically engage with, its fundamental neo-colonial and neo-liberal matrix. The article argues that the stalemate experienced by the European Union with respect to its regional and global relevance can only be overcome by bringing to the surface buried or disqualified knowledges about ‘who counts as European’ beyond whiteness.
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