When Cities Matter: Comparing the LGBT Movement in Warsaw, Poland, and Buenos Aires, Argentina

With a focus on the role global cities play in facilitating specific kinds of interactions, exchanges, and strategies for local activists engaged in a global social movement, this research investigates how LGBT activists in Warsaw, Poland, and Buenos Aires, Argentina organize their efforts for national place-making via the city. Through ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with activists in both sites, this work analyzes cities as simultaneously local, national, and global spaces and explores how each dimension has been useful to activists. This project also looks at the past significance of cities for the construction of national identity and how dominant interpretations and frames have either been of help to activists or a major obstacle.