Researching Transnational Solidarities around LGBTQ Politics in Poland: Brief Reflections

Abstract

About The Project We wish to give you a brief overview of our current research project on transnational activist networks and solidarities around LGBTQ politics in Poland. Since April 2008, we have collaborated on research project, funded by the Manchester Institute for Social and Spatial Transformations at Manchester Metropolitan University, in which we are concerned with how transnational sexual 'solidarities' are produced. How do transnational links in political and cultural LGBTQ activism in Poland come about? How are they sustained? And what obstacles stand in the way? We were eager to explore the geo-political context of these activist networks, including a focus on the role and agency of the EU. We have been keen to explore how solidarity it is understood by different actors within the networks we have studied and if the notion of solidarity is, after all, a helpful concept to theorise transnational LGBTQ activism regarding sexual politics in Central and Eastern Europe. How does solidarity relate to notions of self and other? What kind of political subjectivity is articulated through the will to act in solidarity? What else is at stake in these forms of cooperation? Is solidarity counter-productive? Can it be imperialistic or paternalistic? We have so far conducted interviews with 36 activists in Poland,