Negotiating within legal ambiguity: same-sex partners, family disputes and negotiation in Italy

This chapter offers a contextual analysis of Gulliver’s processual model of negotiation as applied to family disputes involving same-sex partners and same-sex parents. It addresses the question: what factors influence the communication between the disputants and the transition from one phase to another phase of the negotiation process? Drawing upon empirical data collected through semi-structured interviews in Italy with same-sex couples and mediators, this chapter argues that contextual factors significantly influence the nature of the negotiation process and its cyclical and developmental components. In particular, ambiguities in the (or absence of adequate) legal frameworks concerning same-sex relationships and parenting, combined with a variety of expressions of micro-politics—including politics of the body, parenthood, family—are found to hinder the exchange of information and the transition from one phase of the negotiation to another one.