Scientific report: 'Celebration and Protest: A Comparative Study of Pride Parades in Six European Countries' (P13-0861:1)

1) The main aim of the project was to contribute to a better understanding of LGBT protest dynamics through a comparative study of Pride parades in seven European countries — Czech Republic (Prague), Italy (Bologna), Netherlands (Haarlem), Poland (Warsaw), Sweden (Stockholm and Gothenburg), Switzerland (Geneva and Zurich), the UK (London) — and Mexico City. This was an expansion of our original proposal to include another post-communist country, as well as Mexico City.

2) Firstly, we have engaged with the so-called ‘normalization thesis’ and have tested whether Pride demonstrators are more or less representative of the general population in regards to ideological and party political orientations, and in regards to socio-demographic and socio-economic profiles. In none of the countries could we find indications that Pride participants mirror the general populations. Even in LGBT-friendly countries where we expected that Pride parades would mobilize a broader cross-section of LGBT individuals and potential LGBT political supporters, sic the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, the participants were not representative of the general population. Much like new social movement demonstrators more generally, Pride participants are overwhelmingly from the middle strata, highly educated, young, and are politically left orientated (aside from Czech participants). Nonetheless, we did find country level differences in the mobilizing patterns of the surveyed Pride parades, which underline the impact of general political opportunities on the national level, as well as the mobilizing structures of LGBT movements.

Secondly, we have explored the meanings of Pride parades through an analysis of the motives for participation expressed by participants in our Pride surveys. A particular focus is on the extent to which Pride participants in different locations confer an explicitly political meaning to their participation. The results show both a diversity of motives for participation within Pride parades and significant differences in the proportions of various motives across parades in different locations. In line with the theoretical expectations, a more politicized protest orientation is most common in Italy and Poland, where the LGBT movement received comparatively little support from both elites and the general public. Conversely, in the Netherlands (and to some extent the UK), where both elites and public opinion are supportive, participants tend to emphasize visibility, meeting friends and entertainment as motives for participation.

Thirdly, we found that Pride Parades are more or less inclusive umbrella events for a wide range of actors to perform their political messages. The form of the Pride parade allows for those participating to stake out different, even conflicting, political positions, identities, and tactics. For Pride organizers, a parade is an annual occasion to bring together the LGBT movement’s diversity for a temporary, tentative and often contested display of ‘unity’. Pride Parades, we argue, rather than performances of unity in message, tactics and identity, are performances of diversity ‘unified’ through their creative coordination and collaboration of simply coming together. This is indeed one of the strengths of Pride Parades. Pride Parades highlight a new meaning to what ‘unity’ in contemporary political protest more generally is—acknowledging diversity and emphasizing the spirit of cooperation suggests that the political challenge posed by Pride Parades is not their explicit statements, but the subtle communication of bringing so many diverse groups together.

3) We had not anticipated the number of non-LGBT individuals that take part in Pride parades: 41% in Stockholm, 29% in Haarlem, 28% in Warsaw and 15% in London (where this question was posed). We found four contributing factors to their participation. Firstly, they appear to have social ties to LGBT people, which encourage them to lend support and show solidarity with the LGBT movement’s goals. Secondly, we found a markedly high percentage of non-LGBT participants reporting experiences of discrimination and/or marginalization, considerably more than the general population in their country. Among the non-LGBT participants, gender was the main perceived ground for discrimination, and gender was indeed the major predictor of participation in Pride Parades for non-LGBT persons. Thirdly, several non-LGBT participants expressed abstract principles of human rights and justice, which implies a strong sense of moral obligation, most prominently in the Equality Parade in Warsaw and Stockholm Pride. In Pride events, which were in general more political, a sense of moral obligation appears to have been more common than in events which had a more social meaning for the participants. Fourthly, we found that the Pride parades in which the organisers explicitly employed an inclusive strategy had the highest percentage of conscience adherents, which was the case for Stockholm and Warsaw.

Non-LGBT individuals in Pride parades represent the general category of “conscience adherents” in social movements. While contributing to the highly limited research on the comparative position and motive patterns of conscience adherents, our results also identify a direction for further inquiries about this category of participants in other social movements.

Moreover, our findings about the highly diversified meanings conferred to Pride parade participation among participants, and their variation depending on social and political context, opens up for further inquiries about the varying meanings of protest actions in other movement contexts.

4) The project is international at its core, both in terms of building upon data from an international collaboration and in terms of the international comparison in the analysis.

5) Magnus Wennerhag took part in the seminar ”Civilsamhället i det transnationella rummet”, talking about the development of Pride parades in Sweden and internationally. Ledarskapsarenan 2016.02.11; organised by Ideell Arena, Stockholm. Mattias Wahlström was interviewed in Svenska Dagbladet (publ. 2015-07-27) in which our preliminary research results were discussed in detail. Most importantly, we discussed these preliminary results with the key activists we interviewed across Europe and in Mexico City.

6) Firstly, we have a book contract with Routledge with a delivery date for the manuscript October 1st, 2017: Pride Parades in Seven European Countries and Mexico: An International Comparative Analysis of LGBT Movement Dynamics. Through multi-level analyses based on both quantitative and qualitative data the book investigates the impact of contextual variation (country (city)/political context, mobilizing context, demonstrations and mobilization strategy) on who participates and why. Furthermore, in focusing dynamics in the study we underline the relational aspect of LGBT movement politics. The meanings that are inscribed in Pride demonstrations are shaped by the interactions of multiple actors at different levels. The political opportunities available to national LGBT movements, the action resources at hand, the different action frames formulated, and the action repertoires employed are all inextricably intertwined in producing meanings or accounts of specific Pride demonstrations. In short, Pride parades, and the data we have accumulated on them, offer us a valuable lens with which to contribute to our understanding the dynamics of LGBT movements and social movements more generally. Pride parades today, we argue, provide sites of tension — between commercialization and politicization, festivity and protest, normalization and contention — and have assumed different dynamics in different cultural, political and social settings.

Secondly, Mattias Wahlström’s article: “Proud protest and parading party: The meanings that Pride parades in seven European countries have to their participants” (a revised version of a paper presented at the ‘American Sociological Association’ Conference, August 22-25 2015, Chicago) submitted to the American Journal of Sociology, 2017.02.28. In this study, the effects of different national contexts on the varying meanings of Pride parades are explored through a comparison of motives for participation among participants in ten parades taking place in seven European countries. The analysis is based on protest survey data and the open survey responses were coded according to a typology developed specifically for Pride parades. A quantitative analysis of the coded responses shows that the frequency of different motive types varies significantly between different countries. While several different motives for Pride participation were found in all sampled parades, a politicized protest orientation was most common in Italy and Poland, where the LGBT movement received comparatively little support from both elites and the general public. Parades in the Netherlands and the UK, where both elites and public opinion were supportive, were less politicized and participants tended to emphasize visibility and entertainment as motives for participation.

7) In order to ensure open access to our publications we will (1) where possible, pay the optional fee to the journal publishers to make our articles fully accessible without subscriptions, and (2) within the framework of our respective copyright agreements, make available “pre-publication versions” of our book chapters and articles in online repositories, such as the GUP database of the University of Gothenburg.