Attitudes towards the ‘stranger’: negotiating encounters with difference in the UK and Poland

Due to recent intensification in international mobility in Europe, its citizens are exposed to a much wider range of lifestyles and competing attitudes towards difference. Individuals are, therefore, increasingly likely to encounter ‘strangers’ and are, therefore, required to negotiate discontinuities and contradictions between the values that are transmitted through different sites. In response, the article explores the concept of the ‘stranger’ through original data collected in the UK and Poland. The article highlights that the construction of who is a stranger depends on national historical contexts, core values and related visions of the society. The UK and Poland have very different histories and experiences with social diversity, impacting on the ways in which individuals negotiate strange encounters. In both countries, the ‘stranger’ is often seen in a negative way and in relation to the minority groups that are perceived to be visibly different, distinct or ‘unknown’ in contemporary times. In Poland, this is now largely articulated through sexual prejudice (homophobia), whilst in the UK, attitudes towards the ‘stranger’ are largely conveyed through religious prejudice (Islamophobia). As such, the article offers a means of understanding how encounters with difference ‘produce’ strangers in different contexts

Qualitative Research on LGBTQ-Parent Families

Qualitative research on LGBTQ-parent families and queer individuals and families of all kinds has burgeoned, to include narratives, interviews, diaries, emotion maps, participatory action research, and visual and performative methods—individually or in combination. In this chapter, we examine a range of qualitative methods, particularly from the lens of a qualitative multiple methods approach developed by Jacqui Gabb. We also address conceptual, theoretical, intersectional, and methodological tensions that remain or have emerged regarding how qualitative LGBTQ-parent family research is conducted, to what ends, and how it should be represented in publication, for researchers, for practitioners, and for participants themselves. Our goal is to show that qualitative LGBTQ-parent family research has come of age: a great deal of exciting research is appearing around the globe, and yet this area also faces numerous challenges to retaining its cutting edge nature. Finally, we combine new conceptual areas with empirical exemplars on topics highly relevant to studying family relationships in the context of sexuality and other intersections: (a) era, age, and generation; (b) social class, sociocultural capital, and the economies of reproductive labor; (c) listening to children; and (d) situating sexual-maternal identities at home