Uncanny Europe and Protective Europeanness: When European Identity Becomes a Queerly Viable Option

Abstract

Europe has recently become closely associated with LGBTQ rights. It remains unclear, however, what is the role of this association in everyday European imaginations and identifications. Empirical research on European identity hardly ever discusses the role of LGBTQ rights. Nor do we know much about European identifications of LGBTQ people themselves. In this article, I address those gaps from the perspective of Polish LGBTQs in the UK. Drawing on 30 interviews from a recent two-year research project, I discuss my participants’ European imaginations and identifications by developing the concepts of ‘uncanny Europe’ and ‘protective Europeanness’. I show how my participants tend to view Europe as ‘diverse’, ‘open’ and ‘tolerant’, while attributing those characteristics exclusively to Western Europe. I also demonstrate that they tend to readily identify as European in the context of increasingly hostile national identities, with the increasing anti-Polish xenophobia in the UK and growing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in Poland.

‘No room for hate in our country’: Constructing the LGBTI-friendly nation in news discourses after the murder of a gay man in Belgium

“…Moreover, Muslims and migration are problematised although, as far as is known, neither Muslims nor people with a migration background were involved in the murder. The present study broadly supports the findings of earlier analyses, such as the contrast between Belgian LGBTI-friendliness and the ‘anti-modern’ CEE in nationalist discourse (Kahlina, 2015; Szulc, 2022; Wiedlack, 2017) and the depiction of Muslims as homophobic others (Dhoest, 2020c; El-Tayeb, 2011).…”

“…Many of these othering mechanisms have been studied on the European level, as LGBTI-friendliness is frequently attributed to (Western) Europe and its institutions (Szulc, 2022). Two groups or regions that are frequently constructed as European others on the basis of sexuality and gender are Muslims (Dudink, 2016) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Dhoest, 2020a).…”

Queer in Cyprus? The LGBTIQ Movement, Normativity, and Resistance in a Changing (Trans)national Landscape

“…I conducted the interviews from 2009 to 2022 as part of three research projects on sexuality-and gender-nonconforming identities, activism, and politics in Cyprus. This decade witnessed important political, economic, and social shifts in Europe and in individual European countries, not least in respect to LGBTIQ issues-e.g., the rise to power of far-right parties, growing anti-gender mobilization, and the passage of both pro-and anti-LGBTIQ laws (Page 2019;Paternotte 2018;Szulc 2022). Collecting sets of interviews across the span of more than one decade introduces a temporal dimension to the analysis of the issues under investigation.…”

“…Additionally, it does not employ the terms "Europe", "west", or the other pole of the dichotomy that these terms instigate-i.e., "rest" and "periphery"-as essential geographical entities. Problematizing the division and hierarchization of the world, and interrogating the homogenization of regions and historical experiences, it treats these concepts as non-monolithic, fluid, and permeable political, social, economic, and cultural constructs, and as discursive categories that it aims to question (Lewis and Wigen 1997;Puar 2007Puar , 2013Said 1978;Szulc 2022).…”

Here, there, everywhere: The relational geographies of chemsex

“…This process reproduces specific urban inequalities, with some cities (in a very limited range of countries) represented as more 'tolerant' and 'open' than others in the regulation of sexualities. On a related note, Szulc (2022) has recently analysed the narratives of Polish queer migrants living in the UK in relation to a 'European identity' ideal, highlighting how research participants tend to consider Europe positively, as it stands for modernity, openness and diversity, including LGBTQ rights. However, his analysis reveals how this representation seems to be mostly associated with Western Europe, the 'real' Europe, while its peripheries, defined by Szulc as 'internal Others' (p. 389), are constructed on a temporal scale as '"not European yet" with a (rather bleak) potential of becoming "European enough"' (p. 389).…”