About the project

What does family life really look like for LGBTIQ* people in Central and Eastern Europe?

QUEERSHIP is a five-year research project (2026–2030) that takes this question seriously. We study how LGBTIQ* people in Central and Eastern Europe build families, raise children, and create bonds of care and belonging in contexts that rarely make it easy.

We listen. We spend time. We look closely.

Why CEE? Why now?

Central and Eastern Europe is not a blank space on the map of queer family research, but it has long been treated as one. The region is home to vibrant, resilient LGBTIQ* families whose lives have gone largely undocumented. Rapid political shifts, contested rights, and deeply rooted cultural frameworks make this both an urgent and fascinating place to study queer kinship.

QUEERSHIP fills that gap.

Who is involved?

We don’t study LGBTIQ* families from the outside. We work with them.

QUEERSHIP engages queer parents, their children, friends, extended family members, professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers), and LGBTIQ* activists. This multi-stakeholder approach means we capture the full texture of family life, not just select fragments of it.

How does the research work?

QUEERSHIP brings together an unusually rich toolkit. Researchers spend extended time with 40 families across four countries – observing routines and milestones, reading personal diaries, conducting in-depth interviews, and – where appropriate – talking with children themselves. Focus groups bring in the perspectives of allies, professionals, and advocates. A large-scale survey of 1,200 LGBTIQ* parents across the region adds statistical depth and cross-country comparability.

At the heart of the project is the Frame Story Approach, a methodology developed by the PI, which ensures that analytical frameworks emerge from the data rather than being imposed upon it. Participatory Action Research workshops run throughout, inviting families to review findings, push back on interpretations, and help shape how results reach the world.

What will it produce?

Beyond academic publications, QUEERSHIP aims to develop something genuinely new: a Multidimensional Sociocultural Model of Queer Kinship – a theoretical framework built to capture the real complexity and diversity of LGBTIQ* family life in CEE.

The bigger picture

QUEERSHIP is not just about documenting what exists. It is about challenging inherited assumptions of what “family” means and building knowledge that can make a real difference in the lives of LGBTIQ* people across the region and beyond.

QUEERSHIP focuses on four countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Croatia. They share a post-communist past and face similar tensions around democratization and minority rights, yet differ significantly in politics, gender norms, religiosity, and the legal landscape for LGBTIQ* people.

These differences matter.

  • In secular Czechia, greater legal recognition may produce more visible kinship practices.
  • In Hungary and Catholic-dominated Poland, where restrictive frameworks and traditional family ideologies prevail, queer kinship tends to be less visible, more informal, and deeply shaped by strategies of resistance and adaptation.
  • Croatia presents a different paradox: recent legal provisions for LGBTIQ* families and joint adoption coexist with lower public support for same-sex marriage and strong religious influence, generating its own distinctive forms of queer family life.

Comparing these four contexts is not about forcing a single story onto the region. It is about taking seriously both what connects and what divides queer families across CEE.

QUEERSHIP approaches queer kinship through a geo-temporal lens, asking not just what LGBTIQ* families do, but where and when, and how that shapes what is even possible.

Dominant frameworks in kinship studies have been built largely on Anglo-American experiences – contexts where LGBTIQ* families are increasingly legally recognized, socially visible, and institutionally supported. That framework travels badly to CEE. Here, queer families often cannot count on legal protection, social recognition, or state support in anything like comparable ways. They build their bonds differently: through blended structures, planned co-parenting arrangements, and dense reliance on kin networks.

QUEERSHIP works to provincialize the Anglo-American perspective, not to dismiss it, but to develop genuinely context-sensitive theory.

Two key concepts developed by the PI anchor the project’s analytical framework:

  • Coping tactics: drawing on de Certeau’s distinction between tactics and strategies refers to the subtle, often unspoken practices that LGBTIQ* families use to protect and sustain their bonds in the face of legal, institutional, and sociocultural pressure. These are not heroic acts of resistance; they are everyday moves, improvisations, small negotiations that add up to something remarkable.
  • Communicating vessels: reframes how we think about care within queer families, not as something contained within a bounded household unit, but as something that flows through extended networks, including families of origin. These ties can be sources of support and sources of tension simultaneously. Recognizing their complexity is central to understanding how queer families in CEE actually function.

QUEERSHIP’s overarching aim is to radically redefine our understanding of queer kinship by developing a new Multidimensional Sociocultural Model of Queer Kinship grounded in the lived realities of CEE families.

To get there, the project pursues three interconnected objectives:

Objective 1. Challenge existing paradigms in relational and parental practices by examining how LGBTIQ* families in CEE actually form, perform, and display kinship, uncovering what is culturally specific and what cuts across contexts.

Objective 2. Advance understanding of care networks by investigating the complex, often underexplored support systems that LGBTIQ* families mobilize, and how these networks function under conditions of legal and sociocultural marginalization.

Objective 3. Interrogate coping tactics by tracing how LGBTIQ* families navigate restrictive environments, identifying their needs and the strategies they develop to claim recognition – social, institutional, and legal.

Developing a genuinely new conceptual model demands a genuinely innovative methodology.

QUEERSHIP’s approach is built around five core elements:

  1. Mixed and multi-method design – combining qualitative methods (discourse analysis, longitudinal ethnography, focus group interviews) with a large-scale quantitative survey.
  2. Interdisciplinarity – drawing on anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, gender studies, and queer studies to capture what no single discipline can on its own.
  3. Frame Story Approach (FSA) – developed by the PI (Mizielińska & Stasińska, 2020), a methodology that supports theory-building without imposing predefined frameworks, and tailors analytical tools to the specific sociocultural contexts of each research site.
  4. Longitudinality – families are not snapshots. QUEERSHIP follows families over time, tracking how relationships evolve, how challenges shift, and how kinship is made and remade across years.
  5. Participatory Action Research (PAR) – inspired by feminist PAR traditions, QUEERSHIP positions LGBTIQ* families as experts on their own lives, not merely subjects of study. Their feedback actively shapes the research throughout.

QUEERSHIP unfolds across five interconnected work packages:

  • WP1: Mapping the Sociocultural and Political Landscape (Year 1, updated Years 2–4) – establishes the legal, political, and sociocultural baseline for LGBTIQ* family life in each country, grounding everything that follows in real-world context.
  • WP2: Exploring Daily Lives and Kinning Practices (Years 2–3) – longitudinal ethnography with 40 diverse LGBTIQ* families. Participant observation, personal diaries, couple interviews, family map interviews, and – where appropriate – conversations with children themselves.
  • WP3: Investigating Social Networks and Support Mechanisms (Years 3–4) – 16 focus group interviews with significant others, professionals working with LGBTIQ* families, and LGBTIQ* activists. Capturing queer family life through the eyes of those who surround it.
  • WP4: Examining Patterns, Needs, and Coping Tactics through Survey (Year 4) – a stratified survey of 1,200 LGBTIQ* parents across CEE, providing the statistical depth needed for cross-country comparison and policy-relevant findings.
  • WP5: Developing the Multidimensional Sociocultural Model of Queer Kinship (Years 4–5) – synthesizing findings from all work packages into a new, empirically grounded theoretical model.

QUEERSHIP is funded by the European Research Council (Project: 101199632 — QUEERSHIP — ERC-2024-ADG) and led by Professor Joanna Mizielińska at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw.