Sexual Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article examines two different uses of the language of citizenship: in the context of the 'sexual citizen', and the transnational 'European citizen' of European Union politics. It begins with an exploration of how the concept of citizenship has been constitutively built on a set of binary constructs of in/exclusion and can prove a disciplining and regulatory concept. Yet, simultaneously, citizenship can have an active and democratic potentiality. The article interrogates these two faces of citizenship by considering the mobilization of lesbians and gay men through the International Lesbian and Gay Association Europe (ILGA Europe), and the engagement of ILGA with the institutions of the European Union. The article concludes that European and sexual citizenship underscores the tension, not only between active and passive citizenship forms, but more generally, between identity and difference. This tension demands, in turn, a reappraisal of identity-based thinking, in favour of a more coalitional, affinity-based politics .