Legally Speaking
Hostility to the World Metropole: National Identity-based Populism versus Cosmopolitan Global Integration
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Benedict Edward DeDominicis
Globalization has generated significant trends in self-identity evolution, with a significant minority of national publics at home in and benefitting from the individual career and prosperity benefits of globalization. Another large minority reacts with varying degrees of hostility to the perceived threat to their traditional status as the core cultural community within nation states. This reaction produces the Viktor Orban’s Fidesz movement in Hungary, the Law and Justice Party phenomenon in Poland, and the Donald Trump phenomenon in the US, Brexit, as well as populism in Russia and China. This paper considers today’s environment, and how the cosmopolitan global community has developed into an identity community that is the new global urban environment. Populism reacts with jealously to a threat to traditional cultural supremacy within the political community, as the core culture setting the romanticized, stereotyped standards of ideal behavior. New transnational authority centers have emerged and are emerging, increasingly challenging the utilitarian relevance of these traditional norms. The reaction to urbanism in the late stages of the Habsburg and Romanov empires, including militant authoritarianisms of the left and right, reacting to the perceived humiliation by the urban metropolitans, has parallels today with militant Islamism and European and American national populisms. Politics increasingly focuses on symbolic satisfaction of populist demands for recognition of their grievances. The economic vested interests in globalization continue to promote additional integration for greater capital accumulation. The result is increasing tension between macroeconomic performance and political legitimation of public policy, relying increasingly on populist exclusionary appeals.
Global Sexual Orientation and Gender-Identity Laws : Supporting Versus Limiting National Achievements
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Serwatka Thomas
After examining 185 nations from across the globe, what do we know about laws affecting LGBT individuals? What are the strongest predictors of affirming laws; where and why do we find barriers and lack of support? Are we moving forward or backward, or are we standing still? How difficult is it going to be to build fully LGBTIQ inclusive society in a country that is or is becoming more nationalistic?
Muslim Identity in Family Law in Europe : A Question of Legal Pluralism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amal Yousef Omar Alqawasmi
With the increasing numbers of immigrants to Europe, a new concern has emerged in regard to their religious identity and its effect on their life, and on the new community to which they have immigrated. In this focus, Islam as the religion of a remarkable number of immigrants, has raised an important legal issue in European communities, which is Muslim family law, and the demands of a new consideration of applying it within the European family law legal system, as a natural consequence of living in modern and plural countries, where every resident has the right to protect their religious and cultural identity. On the other hand, there is deep worry from the European countries themselves towards this kind of protection of religious identity through applying Muslim family law; as this could lead to a parallel community inside, and negatively affect social cohesion. All this has brought tension in some cases and critical discussions in others. According to the awareness of what is needed to be achieved, and what is possible to be realized, this paper analyses and evaluates the following questions: 1-Which space has been given under the protection of human rights to religious identity in family laws? 2-To what extent do family laws in Europe accommodate, or not, Muslim religious identity? 3- What risks do we have in responding, or not, to Muslim religious identity in family laws, in governing pluralistic community?
Civil Society Actors Promoting Reception in Times of Xenophobia: Interactions and Low Visibility Actions at the Local Level
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Iraklis Dimitriadis
Literature on multi-level governance (MLG) has mainly focused on vertical dynamics, that is relations between different scales of governance, rather than those horizontal (interaction between public and non-public actors). This timely research provides insights on the role of civil society actors in asylum governance, and paying particular attention to horizontal dynamics. In the context of the ongoing H2020 project MAGYC, the paper delves into 30 interviews with local governmental actors, journalists in local newspapers, representatives of civil society organizations and refugees themselves in Northern Italy. In analysing the role of and the interactions between public and non-public actors, it is argued that when promotion and implementation of reception and integration projects are far from being feasible, civil society actors may opt to establish relationships and dialogue with those opposing migration indicating tolerance in order to avoid conflicts. Pro-migrant actors organise meetings at the municipality or neighbourhood level in order to guarantee, for instance, the well-functioning of a (new) reception center. They adopt a low visibility model of action to avoid conflicts; for instance, they may not make overtly known the opening of a new reception center, or they may prefer to organise events promoting integration in private spaces, rather than in public squares. Interpersonal relations at the local (or neighbourhood) level are of great relevance. It is thus argued that such patterns could contribute to reducing people’s prejudices and fear related to immigration and refugees and generating trust.
