Contesting Europeanisation: everyday negotiations of Europe and LGBT rights in Serbia

This article examines how everyday understandings of Europe in Serbia shape public resistance to LGBT rights in the context of EU accession. Drawing on discourse analysis of user comments on online news articles about Belgrade Pride parades, it explores the ideational field within which European norms are interpreted and contested. Focusing on comments opposing Pride, we identify four recurring discursive registers – cultural, geographical, political, and technical – organised around two broader narrative schemas. Together, they portray Europe as simultaneously modern and corrupt, democratic and hypocritical, desirable and coercive. LGBT rights frequently emerge as symbols of Western domination, activating narratives of cultural exceptionalism and civilisational defence. We show how these schemas render resistance resilient to the very mechanisms through which accession seeks to promote compliance. This, we argue, demonstrates the need to centre everyday discourse and lived experience in understanding Europeanisation as a negotiated, rather than one-way, process of normative change.