Citizens in Diversity: A Four-Nation Study on Homophobia and Fundamental Rights
This project’s general aim is to enhance the understanding of the European dimension of homophobia and discrimination of gays and lesbians in view of promoting their fundamental rights and citizenship. To this end, the project addresses four key factors:
a) the socio-cultural factors and institutional norms and practices that produce and sustain homophobia in everyday life; b) the legal discourses which, at both the national and EU level, support or hamper the development of new legislation or the application/enforcement of existing law; c) the strategies gays and lesbians deploy in different social contexts to achieve social and political transformation; d) the exchange of good practices between countries with different levels of legal protection for gays and lesbians.
Project leader: Roman Kuhar
Project coworkers: Simon Maljevac, Živa Humer and Neža Kogovšek Šalamon
Project execution
We organized an international conference (EE seminar) on homophobia in schools in Ljubljana (as part of the national conference where the basic findings of the research were presented). Furthermore, we published the book Obrazi homofobije (The Faces of Homophobia), and contributed to the comparable book in English: Confronted Homophobia in Europe: Legal and Social Perspectives. All these outcomes are the results of the analysis of the collected empirical material (focus groups and interviews with students of education + gays and lesbians + analysis of law).
Results
1) Kuhar, Roman, Neža Kogovšek Šalamon, Živa Humer, Simon Maljevac. 2011. Obrazi homofobije. Mirovni inštitut: Ljubljana.
2) Kuhar, Roman, Živa Humer, Simon Maljevac. 2011. Integrated, but Not Too Much: Homophobia and Homosexuality in Slovenia. In: Confronted Homophobia in Europe: Legal and Social Perspectives, Luca Trappolin, Alessandro Gasparini and Robert Wintemute, eds. Oxford: Hard publishing, pp. 51-78.
3) Kogovšek Šalamon, Neža. 2011. Traits of Homophobia in Slovenian Law: From Ignorance towards Recognition? In: Confronted Homophobia in Europe: Legal and Social perspectives, Luca Trappolin, Alessandro Gasparini and Robert Wintemute, eds. Oxford: Hard publishing, pp. 171-202.