Abstract
This paper examines the quality seal for LGBTQ+ sensitive care developed by Berlin’s LGBTQ+ Center “Schwulenberatung” as a case study of institutional diversification in Germany’s eldercare sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork as part of the seal’s implementation team, I focus on two key tools at the heart of the quality seal’s certification process: institutional documents and staff trainings. While the revision of mission statements, onboarding procedures, and codes of conduct aims to inscribe diversity into bureaucratic form, these efforts often remain symbolic. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s notion of “non-performativity,” I show how documents can signal inclusion without enacting structural change. By contrast, I consider how the training’s use of personal stories—especially those of aging LGBTQ+ individuals—functions as a different kind of infrastructure: one that foregrounds proximity, discomfort, and ethical engagement. Such “cases” do not provide clear-cut instructions; rather, they unsettle. They make diversity felt rather than just named. Following Lauren Berlant, I understand these stories as affective encounters that disturb the fantasy of neutral, equal care and invite attention to the relational pressures of coexistence. The paper argues that diversification, when reduced to bureaucratic compliance, risks reproducing the very exclusions it claims to address. Yet, in its more affective and inconvenient moments—through narrative, encounter, and friction—it also opens possibilities for a more responsive, situated practice of care. What emerges is not a model for best practice, but a scene of ongoing negotiation: a space where diversity becomes a lived and contested relation rather than a checkbox.
Presenters
Christopher ZraunigPhD Candidate/Fellow, Anthropology/Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, New Jersey, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Eldercare, Institutional Diversity, Quality Management, Queer Aging, Affective Infrastructures
