As planned, two ethnographic local studies were realized in two countries in a phase of evolving legal recognition of lesbian IM. According to ILGA’s Rainbow Europe Map – a chart evaluating the current status of laws, policies and practices affecting LGBTI people in Europe – provides France with an overall score of 56% and ranked it 13th out of 49 countries and, on the thematic criteria “family rights”, 57% and a ranking of 15th. According to the law on same-sex marriages (2013), lesbian IM can ask either for full adoption if the child is under 15 and the IM are married; if not, simple adoption and, if the legal mother does not provide authorisation to adoption, the demande de droit aux relations familiales [request for the right to family relation] or the délégation de l’autorité parentale [delegation of parental authority]. The revision of the law on bioethics adopted on July 2020 introduced anticipated IM recognition in case of Assisted Reproductive Technology ART. However, the implementation of these procedures is heterogeneous according to the tribunal and changes over the years according to the circulation of judges. ILGA ranks Italy number 34/49 with a total score of 23% and, for the thematic criteria “family”, gave a score of 15% and the 27th position. Although the law on civil unions voted into place in 2016 doesn’t recognise same-sex parenting, some municipalities have authorised the inscription of the lesbian IM on the child’s birth certificate (under the condition that the IM’s name appears on the documents of the clinic abroad where ART has been realised) and some courts have accepted the request for adozione in casi particolari [adoption in special cases] on condition of the legal mother's consent and provided that the IM can demonstrate that they have already developed affective ties with the child.
A trilingual website (English, French, Italian) (
https://lemokiac.hypotheses.org/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)) and a flyer have been prepared in order to recruit research participants. The flyer was distributed thanks to personal and professional contacts through email, whattsapp, social networks and associations.
Data on the preparation of the legal file have been collected within both domestic and legal-administrative kinship spaces:
The methodology included: 1) ethnographic participant observation with a reflexive approach; 2) informal conversations with children using a set of ethnographic child-centred research techniques (i.e. observation of first uses of kinship language, production of kinship charts, informal conversations, written data) according to the participant’s age, competences and social characteristics; 3) biographical interviews with parents; 4) semi-structured interviews with professionals; 5) a body of written documents (i.e. applications, sentences, reports by neuropsychiatrists etc.
Source:
https://www.rainbow-europe.org/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre).
Overview of the results and their exploitation dissemination
I produced i) an ethnographic account of legal procedures for the recognition of intentional kinship within lesbian-parented families, including both children’s perspectives and the inclusion of the interest of the children by professionals (FORM OF DISSEMINATION: Public conferences (n.2) and research paper (n.1); 2) child-centred kinship concepts (Public conference (n.1) Special Issue (n.1) Presentation of the special issue (n.1); ii) Creative ethno-graphic practices (Workshop in a public conference (n.1) Article in an high-impact journal (n.1) Affect-theater script (n.1) Workshops (n.1 for children and n.1 for adults)
