Getting to the Pink Picket Fence: How LGB Migrants Negotiate Same-Sex Marriage

Despite the increasing legalization trend, same-sex marriage remains inaccessible to couples in most countries. Such exclusions, however, can be circumvented by migrants who, in the process, also negotiate diverse and even divergent meanings of marriage embedded in different socio-institutional contexts. This study examines such diverse meanings of marriage among LGB transnational migrants based on biographic narrative interviews with nine individuals married to same-sex partners in Belgium and the Netherlands and coming from Central and Eastern European countries with constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage. The study highlights the negotiations of intimate relationships in the context of the new institutional opportunity of marriage and stresses how the similarities between migrants and non-migrants testify to the strengthening of same-sex marriage as a social institution. Focusing further on migrants' unique experiences of marriage in divergent socio-institutional contexts, this study also shows how same-sex marriage empowers LGB migrants even where it is (still) not available

A lesbian, gay and bisexual migration tale: On the role of intimate citizenship for transforming sexual subjectivities

This study examines the role of migrations for sexual subjectivities, based on biographic narrative interviews with CEE LGB migrants married or raising children with a same-sex partner in Belgium and the Netherlands. Migrants’ experiences highlight the salience of the migration-as-liberation with the empowering role of new beginnings in LGB-protective countries. At the same time, migrants’ stories also challenge this liberation tale, especially when situated within transnational family relations. In this context, migration and post-migration junctures differently impact sexual subjectivities, demonstrating fragmentations and non-linearity, and highlighting how migrations are only potentially transformative, with an important role played by full access to intimate citizenship

Challenges of qualitative data sharing in social sciences

Open science offers hope for new accountability and transparency in social sciences. Nevertheless, it still fails to fully consider the complexities of qualitative research, as exemplified by a reflection on sensitive qualitative data sharing. As a result, the developing patterns of rewards and sanctions promoting open science raise concern that quantitative research, whose “replication crisis” brought the open science movement to life, will benefit from “good science” re-evaluations at the expense of other research epistemologies, despite the necessity to define accountability and transparency in social sciences more widely and not to conflate those with either reproducibility or data sharing

‘Things were good during Tito’s times, my parents say’: How young Croatian generations negotiated the socially mediated frames of the recent Yugoslav past

How do new generations in a society negotiate different perspectives of a controversial past available from various sources? How do they use the past to make sense of their lives? Using in-depth interviews with 72 young members of the first two Croatian post-Yugoslav generations, this study analysed how these young people acquired elements of their repertoires on the recent Yugoslav past from family members, school and the media, how they assessed these elements in terms of plausibility and legitimacy, and how they appropriated or questioned them. The study’s findings suggest that the credibility of the socially mediated perspectives of the past was increased by the emotional bond with the sources who adopted the role of witnesses, and by the fit with the personal concerns of the meaning-making audience. As a result, the most successful were the frames transmitted by the communicative sources through social interaction, rather than by the institutionalized sources

Transformative power of same-sex marriage and non-heterosexual reproductivity. How parents of GLB offspring adjust to their marriage and children

One of the most notable gaps in the growing field examining parents' adjustments to their offspring's non-heterosexuality concerns parents' responses to same-sex marriage and (grand)children from non-heterosexual relationships. Informed both by the life stories of GLB migrants who are married or raising children with a same-sex partner in Belgium and the Netherlands and by the accounts of their parents living in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries with a constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage, the present study addresses this gap. It also takes the inquiry a step further by situating it within the framework of contrasting normative expectations. This approach identifies how parents' responses and disclosures, though firmly situated in the context of their homonegative CEE environments, also negotiate new expectations formed by their GLB offspring in GLB-friendly Belgian and Dutch environments. In addition, this study highlights both the parents' difficult negotiation of same-sex marriage and the role of children in facilitating the acceptance of same-sex families in the CEE context. The implications of these patterns – particularly the transformative power of same-sex marriage and non-heterosexual reproductivity – are further situated into a wider intimate citizenship debate on the consequences of the inclusion of GLB individuals into the mainstream institutions

Why Mark Regnerus' 'Texan Study' Does Not Really Talk about the Well-being of Children from Same-Sex Parents

2012. godine, Mark Regnerus, sociolog koji se bavi seksualnim ponašanjem, dinamikom odnosa i religijom na Sveučilištu u Texasu - Austinu u SAD-u, je objavio rad o dobrobiti odrasle djece roditelja koji su imali istospolnu vezu. Taj rad, u Hrvatskoj poznatiji kao 'Teksaška studija', tvrdi da djeca iz obitelji istospolnih roditelja imaju štetnije ishode od djece raznospolnih roditelja. Taj zaključak je naišao na veliku pažnju javnosti i uskoro je postao glavni argument organizacija koje zagovaraju daljnja ograničenja i ukidanja prava LGBT pojedinaca i istospolnih parova poput organizacije U ime obitelji u Hrvatskoj. No bilo kakav dublji pogled u karakteristike Regnerusove studije i u ograničenja njegovih zaključaka jasno pokazuje da ovo istraživanje zapravo ne može ništa reći o dobrobiti djece iz obitelji istospolnih roditelja i nikako se ne može navoditi kao dokaz da su ishodi djece istospolnih partnera štetniji od ishoda djece raznospolnih partnera. Stoga je rad naišao na vrlo snažnu negativnu reakciju znanstvene zajednice koja je ukazivala na metodološke probleme i na neprimjerenost zaključaka koje autor iznosi. Iako je istraživanje koje je Regnerus vodio zaista bilo impresivno prema svom obimu i podacima koje je prikupio, mnogi su znanstvenici (uključivši, na primjer, i Američku sociološku organizaciju) osudili Regnerusa zbog zlorabe podataka iz te studije i zbog pristranog prikazivanja rezultata koje nije bilo u skladu s načelima dobre znanstvene prakse. Kako bi se zainteresiranim čitateljima omogućilo da sami procijene opravdanost ovih kritika, ovaj tekst daje detaljan pregled Regnerusovog članka iz 2012 godine. U ovom pregledu se sustavno prikazuju i komentiraju glavni elementi svakog znanstvenog rada: istraživačka pitanja, podaci i uzorak, analiza, glavni rezultati i zaključak te ograničenja studije. Nakon prikaza tih elemenata, slijedi pregled glavnih objavljenih komentara i kritika Regnerusove studije, kao i detaljna analiza članka Chenga i Powella iz 2015. godine u kojoj autori re-analiziraju podatke iz Regnerusove studije i pokazuju da značajnih razlika u štetnim ishodima između djece istospolnih roditelja i djece iz drugih obiteljskih struktura ipak nema

Social Exclusion of Sexual Minorities in Croatia

At the end of 2013 and in 2014, Croatia was marked by two very different changes in the status of sexual minorities. Firstly, same-sex partners were banned from the institution of marriage by a constitutional referendum. Secondly, the new Life Partnership Act provided the same-sex partners with most marital rights, except the joint-adoption right. This clearly illustrates conflicted trends of Croatian society. On one hand, improvements in the status of sexual minorities could have been noted as early as in 1970s and 1980s. After a break in these positive trends in the 1990s, the status of sexual minorities was particularly improved in the 2000s. Nevertheless, many of these positive changes were not accompanied by changes in the hetero-normative and homophobic practices of the Croatian society. This becomes evident in the overview of selected aspects of social exclusion of sexual minorities in all four systems of social exclusion (the democratic and legal system, the labour market, the welfare system, and the family and community system) that is, in this paper, primarily based on the results of the 2012 EU LGBT study, and complemented with the results of recent Croatian LGBT-related studies

Sexualities and class in transnational family practices of LGB migrants in Belgium and the Netherlands

The present paper focuses on transnational families of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) migrants and addresses their peculiar absence in sociological and geographical perspectives across migrations, families and sexualities research. It draws from a study of middle-class LGB migrants who are married or raising children with a same-sex partner in Belgium and the Netherlands and their parents still residing in select Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries with constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage. The goal of the study is to examine how intersections of class and sexualities shape CEE LGB migrants’ trajectories and transnational family practices. The analysis is based on one life story, situated in a comparative framework. The present study approaches the middle-class experiences and non-normative sexualities of CEE migrants as continuously reappearing and disappearing privileges and disadvantages. From this viewpoint, the study highlights class advantages as consistently alleviating the disadvantages of non-normative sexualities, but also simultaneously bringing both further restrictions and additional benefits to the married CEE LGB migrants, particularly those with children. These restrictions are best reflected in the limits to further mobilities that stem from the risk of losing extensive legal protection of same-sex partnership and parenting. The benefits further extending class advantages are identifiable in the intensification of transnational family practices following planned same-sex parenthood. These not only transform and strengthen the intimacies of CEE LGB migrants with their families-of-origin, but they also contribute to shifting assumptions of ‘normal’ familyhood, particularly in relation to technology-assisted reproduction, social parenthood and the nurturer roles

Culture Wars as a Speech Act: Reflecting on Civilizational and Worldview Divides in the Case of Croatian Anti-Gender Mobilizations

This chapter discusses the concepts of "civilizational divide" and "worldview divide2 as derivations of the "cultural wars" concept on the case of anti-gender mobilizations for a constitutional definition of marriage as a union of a woman and a man in Croatia and the subsequent mobilizations against abortion

Zašto 'Teksaška studija' Marka Regnerusa ne govori o dobrobiti djece iz obitelji istospolnih roditelja

2012. godine, Mark Regnerus, sociolog koji se bavi seksualnim ponašanjem, dinamikom odnosa i religijom na Sveučilištu u Texasu - Austinu u SAD-u, je objavio rad o dobrobiti odrasle djece roditelja koji su imali istospolnu vezu. Taj rad, u Hrvatskoj poznatiji kao 'Teksaška studija', tvrdi da djeca iz obitelji istospolnih roditelja imaju štetnije ishode od djece raznospolnih roditelja. Taj zaključak je naišao na veliku pažnju javnosti i uskoro je postao glavni argument organizacija koje zagovaraju daljnja ograničenja i ukidanja prava LGBT pojedinaca i istospolnih parova poput organizacije U ime obitelji u Hrvatskoj. No bilo kakav dublji pogled u karakteristike Regnerusove studije i u ograničenja njegovih zaključaka jasno pokazuje da ovo istraživanje zapravo ne može ništa reći o dobrobiti djece iz obitelji istospolnih roditelja i nikako se ne može navoditi kao dokaz da su ishodi djece istospolnih partnera štetniji od ishoda djece raznospolnih partnera. Stoga je rad naišao na vrlo snažnu negativnu reakciju znanstvene zajednice koja je ukazivala na metodološke probleme i na neprimjerenost zaključaka koje autor iznosi. Iako je istraživanje koje je Regnerus vodio zaista bilo impresivno prema svom obimu i podacima koje je prikupio, mnogi su znanstvenici (uključivši, na primjer, i Američku sociološku organizaciju) osudili Regnerusa zbog zlorabe podataka iz te studije i zbog pristranog prikazivanja rezultata koje nije bilo u skladu s načelima dobre znanstvene prakse. Kako bi se zainteresiranim čitateljima omogućilo da sami procijene opravdanost ovih kritika, ovaj tekst daje detaljan pregled Regnerusovog članka iz 2012 godine. U ovom pregledu se sustavno prikazuju i komentiraju glavni elementi svakog znanstvenog rada: istraživačka pitanja, podaci i uzorak, analiza, glavni rezultati i zaključak te ograničenja studije. Nakon prikaza tih elemenata, slijedi pregled glavnih objavljenih komentara i kritika Regnerusove studije, kao i detaljna analiza članka Chenga i Powella iz 2015. godine u kojoj autori re-analiziraju podatke iz Regnerusove studije i pokazuju da značajnih razlika u štetnim ishodima između djece istospolnih roditelja i djece iz drugih obiteljskih struktura ipak nema