Italy’s current far-right-led government has advanced anti-queer narratives and legal measures against queer families, people and civil society, reshaping the spaces where rights can be claimed. Same-sex parents and their kids have been among the most targeted, through the contestation of birth certificates and the criminalization of people who undergo surrogacy abroad.
In this seminar Andrea Martini will present findings from his MA thesis on how queer organizations navigate this evolving landscape through diverse legal strategies across multiple arenas: turning to courts to challenge discriminatory policies, reinforcing defensive efforts, working at the international and local levels and balancing contestation with pragmatic adaptation to new constraints. It also highlights how activists increasingly invest in cultural and normative change — working to shift public narratives and build broader legitimacy for queer rights as a foundation for future legal progress.
The Italian case shows that it is not only shifting factors such as the government’s agenda, but also the structural legal framework, that constrain spaces for queer lawfare, limiting strategies that have proven crucial for advancing queer rights in other contexts.
Andrea Martini finished his MA at the UiB Department of Government’s Politics and Governance of Global Challenges MA program, and is currently a research assistant at LawTransform
Commentators are
Bruce Wilson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida
Francesca Feo, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Government, UiB
🗓 Wednesday 29 October at 11:30–12:30
📍 Bergen Global (Jekteviksbakken 31)
🎟 Free, open to all!
Photo credit: Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 by Stefano Bolognini