Conference Agenda

Within a European context marked by anti-trans – and more broadly anti-gender – mobilizations (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017), this paper examines how “gender and sexuality issues” are being taken up within French schools. While a form of “moral panic” (Cohen, 1972) emerged as early as the 2010s following the alleged introduction of so-called “gender theory” into school textbooks (Gallot & Pasquier, 2018), recent years have witnessed a clear resurgence of these controversies. In particular, 2021 saw the publication of the French ministerial circular “For Better Consideration of Issues Related to Gender Identity in Schools”. This policy text, intended to frame the inclusion of trans pupils, has indeed raised concerns – if not outright resistance – among some education professionals (Alessandrin, 2022). More recently, the rollout in 2025 of the “Affective, Relational and Sexuality Education” program (EVARS) appears likewise to have rekindled this “fear of gender” (Butler, 2024) within schools. But what kinds of fears are encapsulated by these “gender and sexuality issues”? International scholarly literature offers valuable insights, documenting a wide range of resistances to gender and sexuality issues in school contexts (Meyer, 2010). Within the French-speaking academic field, research has likewise proliferated, highlighting the persistence of heteronormativity (Richard, 2019) and “cis-schooling” across primary and secondary education in France. At the same time, more recent studies shed light on initiatives aimed at deconstructing the cis-heteronormative model (Flores Espinola et al., 2024). Building on this body of work, the present paper seeks to investigate the introduction of “new” gender and sexuality issues within a specific socio-political context shaped by unprecedented anti-trans and anti-gender social movements. More specifically, it proposes a cross-analysis of two policy “devices,” understood here as heterogeneous assemblages combining prescriptions, materials and practices (Foucault, 1977): on the one hand, the 2021 circular on gender identity in schools, and on the other, the implementation of the EVARS program. This analytical choice is not incidental; rather, it aims to reflect more broadly on how gender and sexuality issues are being institutionally constructed within the field of education and training. To this end, the concept of “new” educational problems (Moignard, 2018) is mobilized. Such an approach helps to clarify what is actually being called into question by education professionals in France, while also contributing to scholarly debates beyond the Francophone context.

Proposal Information

Gender awareness is often shaped through formal curricula and institutionalized forms of education. However, everyday experiences beyond the classroom, particularly those involving mobility and cultural transition, also play a crucial role in how individuals learn, negotiate, and reconfigure their gendered understandings. This study explores how international students’ travel experiences function as an informal yet powerful site of gender learning, where gender norms are encountered, questioned, and reinterpreted across cultural contexts.

As international students move between their home societies, host institutions, and travel destinations, they are exposed to diverse and sometimes contradictory gender regimes. These encounters frequently disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about gender roles, expectations, and identities, prompting processes of reflexivity and re-learning. Rather than viewing gender learning as a planned pedagogical outcome, this study conceptualizes it as an emergent and situated process embedded in mobility, everyday practices, and social interaction.

Guided by an interpretive qualitative approach, the study addresses the following exploratory research questions:

1. How do international students’ cross-cultural travel experiences contribute to the development of gender awareness beyond formal education?
2. How do international students negotiate, perform, and reflect upon their gendered identities while navigating different cultural and social contexts?
3. In what ways can mobility and travel be understood as informal sites of gender learning and re-socialization?

The primary objective of the study is to examine how gender consciousness is produced and transformed through cross-cultural mobility. Focusing on the lived experiences of international students studying in Taiwan, the research aims to illuminate how gender learning occurs through informal, incidental, and embodied encounters rather than through explicit gender education curricula.

Conceptually, the study draws on theories of informal learning, particularly Schugurensky’s (2000) framework of self-directed learning and socialization occurring outside institutional settings, which distinguishes between intentional and incidental learning processes as part of everyday experience. This perspective is complemented by feminist theories of gender socialization, which emphasize that gender learning is continuous, relational, and deeply embedded in everyday life. Feminist Geography and Critical Mobility Studies further inform the analysis by foregrounding mobility as a gendered and power-laden process rather than a neutral act of movement. The concept of the “Third Space” is employed to examine how international students navigate the tension between home and host cultural norms, creating liminal spaces in which dominant gender assumptions may be unsettled and reconfigured. Together, these perspectives frame gender learning as an ongoing, informal educational process shaped through mobility and cultural encounter.

Intersectionality is a central concept in contemporary feminist thought (Crenshaw, 1989), but its high level of theoretical abstraction has historically made it difficult to incorporate into early educational stages, especially within formal education contexts. This paper presents a pedagogical experience developed with sixth-grade students (ages 11–12) in the Spanish education system in a rural context, whose objective was to work on the concept of intersectionality through participatory methodologies and experiential learning, integrated into a broader Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) program.

The proposal stems from a dual question: on one hand, how to make a complex and relatively new concept comprehensible to students in preadolescence; on the other, why participatory methodologies –widely used in non-formal education spaces– remain marginal or exceptional in formal schooling, despite their transformative potential to carry out meaningful learning processes (Gallardo-López y Muñoz, 2021). From this perspective, the work questions the historical separation between formal and non-formal education, as well as the pedagogical assumptions that have legitimised this division (Ríos-Ramírez, 2023).

The experience is based on the design and implementation of a playful, embodied activity structured in two successive rounds. First, students are asked to “embody” characters with different social positions, genders, origins, abilities, and family contexts, confronting situations that reveal structural inequalities. Through movement in space, participants experience in a situated way –but with a certain emotional distance– how different dimensions of identity can interact. In the second round, a methodological shift is introduced: participants stop representing a character and position themselves as themselves. The situations presented are then adapted to their age, context, and possible experiences, so that they can recognise how social axes also intersect in their own reality.

This transition from “embodied character” to “myself” is the pedagogical core of the proposed activity. In this activity, students move from passive listeners to putting their bodies into educational practice, generating a connection between theoretical concepts and sensations, emotions, and affectivities (Freire, 1970). This bodily and emotional dimension is key to the internalisation of content, fostering meaningful (un)learning that goes beyond mere cognitive transmission. The experience shows how students not only understand the concept of intersectionality, but are also able to develop empathetic, critical, and reflective responses to the situations of inequality (re)presented.

During the activity, moments of collective reflection open up through which complex notions about sexualities, gender, discrimination, privileges, and oppression, among others, are internalised, thus connected with previous CSE knowledge.

This paper argues that this type of proposal, applied in contexts where a climate of trust and group cohesion already exists, allows for addressing “intense” theoretical content that often remains beyond the reach of those who are not previously politicised or mobilised. Likewise, it argues that experience contributes to dismantling deeply rooted meritocratic discourses in traditional education, promoting critical awareness of how social categories can intervene and influence life trajectories.