Same-sex couples, same-sex partnerships & homosexual marriages : a Focus on cross-national differentials

Since 1989, nine European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden) provided same-sex couples the opportunity to register their union in front of a representative of the State and thus contracting legal rights and duties. This conference aims to gather the researchers working on the topic in order to picture the current state of the research on the different countries. The research purpose is directed towards the explanation of why people register/marry (or not) and to find out which type of society favours the registration/marriage and why. The study of the same-sex couple will be at the heart of our concern.

The knowledge of the social interactions involved in the process of same-sex registrations and marriages can be addressed through various disciplines: the law (which differences of status, rights and obligations exist between the registered or not, married or not, couples?), demography (which populations of couples do register or not, marry or not?) anthropology and sociology (which social conditions in which institutions lead to the passage from not-registered to registered and not-married to married and in what sense homosexual and heterosexual couples differ?). A cross-national analysis will reveal if people register/marry more frequently here than there and under which conditions and will seek to find out if higher frequencies of registration reflect higher numbers of couples (per inhabitant) or higher propensities to register. It will reveal also the driving forces, which are to interact at different levels (individual and societal).