Tracing Queer Citizenship over Time: Ageing, ageism and age-related LGBTI+ politics in Europe

Sexual and gender diversity are constitutive elements of democratic societies which have been targeted by extreme-right populism and other anti-democratic forces.

Taking queer citizenship as a set of criteria through which democracies can be evaluated, TRACE explores the extent to which the EU has influenced local political and socio-legal advancements in LGBTI+ rights, narratives and experiences over time.

To respond to this aim, TRACE develops an innovative age-sensitive, analytical lens focused on ageing, ageism and age-related LGBTI+ politics through which progress and backlash in countries that experienced substantial changes in their intimate citizenship regimes will be investigated.TRACE uses a multiscale life-course approach centred on gendered/sexed processes of ageing in the context of a rapidly changing Europe.

LGBTI+ elders carry a unique embodied knowledge of struggle and resistance, offering a precious lens through time, from once criminalized outlaws to the intimate citizens of today’s EU LGBTI-freedom zone, who outlasted a variety of challenges, including the AIDS pandemic and related stigma.

The countries included in this research are Portugal, Italy, Greece, Malta and Slovenia, offering a comprehensive overview of changes across time and space in Europe, including the impacts of religion and secularism, traditional and advanced intimate regimes, and the relation to the EU LGBTI+ evolving framework.

With a focus on the South as an imagined political space of silence and resistance, the research enables an in-depth portrait of different regions of Southern Europe today, grounded on the life stories of older adults whose lifespan accompanies these changes.

Their shared and untold past of oppression will inform scholarly knowledge regarding current and future policymaking, particularly timely in a rapidly changing Europe grappling with the expansion of populism and anti-gender backlash.