Project description
Subjectivity, language and sexuality at the margins of belonging in Latvia
In Latvia, Russian-speaking sexual minorities remain largely invisible in both research and public debate. At the same time, they face intersecting pressures through which language, sexuality and gender are politicised as markers of belonging, recognition and exclusion within an ethnically framed national order shaped by broader European and geopolitical tensions. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SexNat project examines how these minorities negotiate politicised language hierarchies, sexuality-based norms of national belonging, and broader European and geopolitical tensions. Through in-depth life-history interviews in Riga and Daugavpils, SexNat will develop a theoretical model of subjectivity and analyse how 'Europeanness' functions as an ambivalent resource that can offer protection and recognition while also imposing constraints.
Objective
Russian-speaking sexual minorities in Latvia remain largely invisible in scholarship, limiting both academic understanding and policy responses. SexNat fills this gap by analysing their lived experiences in the face of dual ascription of disloyalty: their language being often politicised as a sign of alignment with Russia, their sexuality framed as dissenting from sexual nationalism. Since 2004, Latvia’s nation-building has combined EU/NATO integration with an ethnic-democratic regime that ties belonging to language, while Russian has been progressively excluded from the public sphere. In parallel, conscription and a heterocentred policy environment reinforce martial masculinity as a test of belonging. Masculinity becomes a key site where proving loyalty becomes a condition of belonging, a dynamic reinforced by military conscription reintroduction after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Across this field, sexual nationalism and homonationalism can operate jointly through linguistic hierarchies (including NGO language practices), producing a regime where loyalty is scrutinised via sexuality and language.
Through in-depth life-history interviews conducted in Riga and Daugavpils, SexNat seeks to co-construct a theoretical model of subjectivities that transcends both national (Latvia’s ethnic democracy) and supranational (EU versus “Russian world”) identity frameworks. It will do so by engaging with emic categories and alternative forms of subjectivation, in order to assess the extent to which these may unsettle the binary opposition between “us” and “them” through which disloyalty is ascribed. Conceptually, SexNat will show how linguistic, sexual, and gendered hierarchies underpin the ascription of disloyalty, and how “Europeanness” operates as an ambivalent resource - at once refuge, constraint, and hybrid belonging - at the margins of EU citizenship, thereby advancing scholarly debates and informing strategies for more inclusive European societies.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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37129 Verona
Italy
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