LGBT organizations defending asylum seekers persecuted because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity are increasingly referring themselves to Europe in their advocacy work, both a as region which should welcome people chased out from their country because of their sexual and gender preferences and as a set of rules and institutions promoting specific values. Europe has thus become a distinctive element of their discourses and their strategies (Ayoub and Paternotte 2014). This is exemplified by the participation to European projects, the development of litigation strategies targeting European courts, numerous references to European law in national campaigns and intensifying contacts with European NGOs like ILGA-Europe and European institutions (both the EU and the CoE).
However, the increasing Europeanization of these domestic organizations has not necessarily been accompanied by further NGOization. Comparing French and Belgian LGBT associations, I show different degrees of NGOization. Belgian organizations are more professionalized and institutionalized, while French ones are more scattered and explicitly reluctant to get into the process of NGOization. This comparison allows me to tease out the role of Europeanization in the NGOization of civil society organizations, especially in comparison with national factors like the political system or the political culture.
This paper relies on in-deep documents analysis (including archives and reports) and on more than forty semi-directed interviews with member of LGBT associations and members of public agency in charge of asylum in Belgium and France. I have also participate at numerous meeting organized by these associations in Belgium and France between September 2015 and April 2016, both at the European and national level.
