Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland

Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland explores ways in which queer families from Central and Eastern Europe complicate the mainstream picture of queer kinship and families researched in the Anglo-American contexts. The book presents findings from under-represented localities as a starting point to query some of the expectations about queer kinship and to provide insights on the scale and nature of queer kinship in diverse geopolitical locations and the complexities of lived experiences of queer families. Drawing on a rich qualitative multi-method study to address the gap in queer kinship studies which tend to exclude Polish or wider Central and Eastern perspectives, it offers a multi-dimensional picture of ‘families of choice’ improving sensitivity towards differences in queer kinship studies. Through case studies and interviews with diverse members of queer families (i.e., queer parents, their children) and their families of origin (parents and siblings), the book looks at queer domesticity, practices of care, defining and displaying families, queer parenthood familial homophobia, and interpersonal relationships through the life course. This study is suitable for those interested in LGBT studies, sexuality studies, kinship and Eastern European studies.

Joanna Mizielińska holds DSs (habilitation) in Sociology, University of Warsaw, and a PhD in Women’s Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of Polish Academy of Sciences. She was a Fulbright scholar at Princeton University working under the mentoring of Professor Judith Butler, CIMO researcher at the Christina Institute, University of Helsinki, and visiting scholar at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University and the Department of Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She currently works as Associate Professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her interests concentrate on queer theory, queer kinship, and sociology of gender, sexuality, and families. Recently, she was a Principal Investigator of the project "Families of Choice in Poland" (2013–2016) and Co-Investigator in "Doing Right(s): Innovative Tools for Professionals working with LGBT Families" (2016–2020) and "Queer(y)ing Kinship in the Baltic Region" (2016–2021). She is the author of Different or ordinary? Families of choice in Poland (2017), Sex/Body/Sexuality (2007), and (De)Constructions of Femininity (2004) and co-author of In Different Voices. Families of Choice in Poland (2017) and Families of Choice in Poland. Family Life of Nonheterosexual Persons (2015). She is co-editor of De-Centring Western Sexualities (Ashgate, 2011 and Routledge, 2016).