Social In/Exclusions of Gender & LGBT+ issues in Europe from ‘liquid modernity’ to ‘risk society’

This paper examines how issues of Gender & LGBT+ inclusion have morphed from generally supported human rights approaches to contested ideological concepts in Europe. Aside from this agent-centered perspective, it highlights the structural-temporal changes in European societies that find themselves confronted with generalized instabilities of ‘liquid modernity’ as pronounced by Bauman and further reinforced by Beck’s ‘risk society’ concept that assumes a near-permanent level of threats and crises. Finally, it highlights differences in policy responses in the EU on selected national levels (in Germany and Poland). In its politico-sociological analysis, it focuses on these pressing societal inclusion issues in Europe today. The in/exclusion of Gender & LGBT+ minorities in politics and society becomes even more volatile as perceived instabilities and risks tend to limit tolerance for unfamiliar or transgressive minority politics. Political exclusion through populist parties and social actors (churches or civil society) in those times advance divisive positions and exacerbate the detrimental impacts on Gender & LGBT+ individuals. Hence social inclusion policies related to family status, workplace equality and political-societal representation need to be re-evaluated and improved as they are not only benefitting more inclusive societies, but are central to social trust and cohesion. Yet the lack of gender equality becomes evident in persistent (trans)gender discrimination, the construction of gender as ‘ideology’, and the lack of representation and substantive equality in an EU that struggles to uniformly address those issues. LGBTI rights still vary substantially across the EU though they have received outsize visibility as a new ground for contesting Europe’s liberalism by more conservative factions. Thus the salience of sexual orientation and gender identity issues evidence the increase in actor-driven identity politics, but also shows that societal inclusion is often accompanied by exclusion. This hypothesis is then applied to in/exclusion in Germany & Poland, from the political mobilization of individuals and parties, to the advocacy of CSOs. While in both cases, a more notable opposition to these rights has emerged, different conceptualizations of risk associated with late modernity condition the degree of in/exclusion. Using discourse analysis and public opinion data, the country cases illustrate these differences, with particular reference to the notion of ‘crises’ and ‘risks’ (of equality, patriarchal-traditional cultures, and families, among others).