Conference Agenda

The European Union (EU) defines its identity and boundaries of belonging through commitments to European values like equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. LGBTIQ+ rights have increasingly become central to the EU’s internal and external legitimization narratives, shaping boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. However, these rights are also contentious, highlighting tensions in the EU’s legitimization, supranational governance, and member states' varying levels of receptiveness to their incorporation into policies.

The 2020 Union of Equality (UoE) initiative, particularly the LGBTIQ Strategy 2020-2025, institutionalizes LGBTIQ+ rights as core European values. Yet, backlash from conservative and far-right actors underscores the fragility of this narrative, as exemplified by Hungary’s 2021 anti-LGBTIQ+ law, which sparked debates over European values and belonging. While Hungary framed the law as aligned with traditional values, EU actors opposed it, intensifying disputes over belonging.

This research examines how LGBTIQ+ rights function as narrative resources for the EU in routine and crisis legitimization. Through qualitative narrative analysis, it investigates the UoE's LGBTIQ 2020-2025 Strategy as routine legitimization and Hungary’s 2021 anti-LGBTIQ+ law as a crisis case. Using the concepts of Rainbow and Freezer Europe - juxtaposing tolerance with regression - it explores how EU narratives mediate tensions between values, governance, and contested belonging. The research addresses gaps in understanding the use of LGBTIQ+ rights in the EU's narrative legitimization.

Contemporary Germany is often noted for its reluctance regarding patriotic displays and nationalist identification. While right-wing movements continuously challenge this perception, the question of national identification also poses an issue for white, progressive Germans. I discuss how they navigate this tension in an interview setting and examine when and why they take up “European” as an alternative identifier. I argue that supranational belonging serves as an ostensibly “nicer” ethnoracial label by avoiding German racial dynamics and obscuring European ones.
Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of 69 semi-structured interviews with white Germans without a “migration background”, I examine their identification with and rejection of the label “German” and specifically analyse ten accounts where “European” is proposed as the preferred identifier.
I argue that “European” is presented as an innocent term, not weighted down by association with national socialism and white exclusivity like “German.” It affords my white interviewees postracial distance from historical and current German racisms and ‘bad’ right-wingers. However, its supposed inclusiveness also obscures European legacies of racist violence and racialisation. Self-identification as European, then, retains racial exclusiveness but allows for cosmopolitan deniability.
By situating my study within the growing body of critical race research in continental Europe, this paper contributes to understanding race and whiteness on the continent. Specifically, it calls for a more critical examination of how Europeanness is mobilised to negotiate national identity in supposedly postracial and progressive settings.

Drawing on extensive empirical work and using legal geography to justify our choice of location, we examine the experiences of non-white Portuguese citizens from both Portugal and those with Portuguese citizenship from former Portuguese colonies, together with their family members, living in the UK, specifically in Great Yarmouth and Lincoln city in the East of England. To date this group have largely been absent from the literature on EU free movement. Our paper therefore offers insights into the geographical reach of EU citizenship beyond the borders of the EU- particularly in the context of lusophone Africa and East Timor. Our paper also examines the everyday legal problems experienced by minoritised ethnic EU citizens: issues related to immigration status, experiences of discrimination and racism, as well as difficulties in accessing support from public bodies such as the NHS and local authorities. By focusing on the particular problems experienced by this group, not only does this identify the particular issues they are facing but it also highlights the extent to which public authorities are – or are not - delivering on their obligations under the public sector equality duty which is intended to ensure better outcomes for these marginalised groups in the future.