ABCD

The UK Government LGBT Action Plan: Discourses of progress and life ‘getting better’

Seminario di Yvette Taylor

18 Marzo 2019, h. 10.30, U3-06

In July 2018, the UK Government launched the LGBT Action Plan outlining its key actions and ambitions for ‘improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people’ (GEO 2018: i) across a range of lifecourse areas, including healthcare, education, employment, legal rights, and safety. Based on research for the Norface funded CILIA – LGBTQI+: Comparing Intersectional Life Course Inequalities amongst LGBTQI+ Citizens in Four European Countries, this paper examines the discursive positioning of ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ in the LGBT Action Plan. Within this, I examine key presences, absences and (re)presentations of LGBTQI+lives in contemporary UK policy discourse, and discuss the enduring material and rhetorical tensions that position the lives, rights and realities of people who identify (or are identified) as ‘LGBTQI+’ in the geo-politically differentiated locales comprising the UK to be ‘getting better’. Examining these contemporary policy, research and media framings provides insight into the ways in which life is – or isn’t – ‘getting better’for (some) LGBTQI+ people, and how ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ are articulated in these contexts, including in the compulsory and post-compulsory education sector.