Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit

Implementing a Queer Pedagogy and Freire’s Critical Dialogue – Lessons from the LGBTIQ+ Community in Xalapa, Veracruz

Zusammenfassung

In this paper, a continued tradition of social pedagogy outside of institutional settings is proposed which emphasises working with marginalised communities as they grapple with identity, agency and resistance. The project is presented with the LGBTIQ+ community, specifically sexual and/or gender dissidents – gay and bisexual men who are cis-gender, transgender and/or non-binary individuals – within the Mexican context of Xalapa, Veracruz. Both a queer pedagogy and Freire’s critical dialogue have been implemented in order to critically examine the impact of hegemonic masculinity and cis heteronormativity. Emphasis is placed on the group participants as generators of knowledge with the aim that they would have the space to recover, review, and rebuild their experiences and legitimate their ways of knowing, while establishing an opportunity for queer relationality to emerge.