Fathers' Rights Movement(s): The Unmaking of Europe?

< style="text-align: left;">According to the editors of “LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe. A rainbow Europe?” European LBGTQ movement plays an important role in strengthening the unity and identity of the European Union as “LGBT rights increasingly belong at the core of European values in the imagination of many actors” (2015). Following this line of argumentation one can make a conclusion that similar situation may concern other social movements focusing on gender and/or sexuality issues. Yet, such conclusion might be wrong especially in the context of some of men’s social movements representing the interests of (still) dominant social category. One of such phenomena is European fathers’ rights movement existing in almost all EU countries and being the most recognisable and “powerful” phenomena among all European men’s movements. One of the specificity of the movement is lack of the transnational cooperation between the activist from particular groups and rather national character of the phenomena. Moreover, in many cases, the activists of the movements represent rather critical approach to the European Union and its values, especially in terms of EU gender equality implementation. Therefore, the main goal of the paper is to frame the discourses on European Union that are present in national father’s rights movements and to analyse their role in the process of Europe (un)making. The paper will be developed on the basis of the ongoing research on Swedish, Polish and German phenomena conducted within a postdoctoral project “Transnational fathers’ rights movement(s) – between European and national dimensions”.