MIGREMOV studies life histories of Polish LGBTQ (former) activists, through their experiences of migration to a Western country. This research is rooted in a context in which homophobia and transphobia are increasingly addressed in Europe, and are instrumentalized in various ways by European governments. In Poland, in particular, politicized LGBTQ-phobia has been promoted by successive governments for the last fifteen years, and state repression against LGBTQ activists is on the rise. In this context, it is often assumed that Polish LGBTQ people tend to leave their country to find a “better life” in Western Europe or North America. However, as different studies have already shown, reality is much more complicated. On the one hand, motivations for migration are diverse, and East/West economic inequalities remain an important cause of departure for everyone. On the other hand, the stigma connected to being an “Eastern European migrant”, and the way this experience interacts with being part of a sexual/gender minority, is often under-estimated.
Polish LGBTQ activists, in particular, are seen as “natural” candidates for migration to Western countries. They can sometimes feel that they are being asked, both by their nationalist opponents and their Western LGBTQ partners, to choose between their attachment to their nation and their allegiance to promoting LGBTQ rights and emancipation presented as a “Western” project, as Agnès Chetaille, MIGREMOV’s Experienced Researcher, had shown in her earlier research. Inspired by a growing body of research on individual activist careers and how their study can tell us how and why people become and remain activists, or on the contrary exit from social movements, MIGREMOV focuses on how different experiences – such as belonging to a sexual/gender minority, political mobilization and migration – interact with each other and influence a life course. It also tackles the subjective aspect of biographies, and looks at the role of emotions and at the dynamics of politicization of various aspects of one’s life.
In the context of rising xenophobia in Europe (and of specific anti-Polish feelings in the UK around Brexit), of growing (East/West) economic inequalities, and of intense public debates about what international response to bring to LGBTQphobia in different places including Poland, MIGREMOV sheds new, insightful light on all of these issues and how they interact, in ways that can be relevant way beyond the specific case of Poland. It also raises the question of social change and the conditions necessary to politicize one’s identity, and organize collectively around it.
