Migrations, Diversity and Non-Discrimination

This course provides the theoretical and analytical tools necessary for engaging with scholarly research on migration and cultural discrimination. Students will engage with issues that are crucial for the ongoing political crisis of many western democracies, impacting upon the very meaning of 'citizenship', when citizens feel progressively unsafe and seem prone to accept populist regressions promising more security and controls. The course integrates the two 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' dimensions, linking systematically the analysis of the public domain with that of the policy domain. The course considers bottom-up interventions by different kinds of 'migrant' and 'native' actors who mobilise for or against diversity, while at the same time discussing the relevance of main 'models' as well as decision-making implications.
Part of the course explores the socially and culturally constructed nature of categories around migration and diversity as well as Othering and boundary-making processes. The other part of the course is dedicated to anti-discrimination law. Starting from the general principles of the international, European and domestic legal order, the course will analyse the linkages between the Rule of law, equality, dignity and fundamental rights. The course will explain which are the protected grounds of discrimination and which are considered, on the contrary, legitimate differences in treatment, focusing on nationality and ethnic origin. The concepts of direct, indirect and multiple discrimination will be analysed in detail, together with the scope of anti-discrimination law and its limits.

By the end of the course, students will acquire the basis for articulating diachronic and cross-regional variations in terms of migrations, diversity and non-discrimination in holistic legal, political and sociological sense. Classes will focus on these variations as they are evolving in the context of globalising economic, migratory and cultural developments. By considering the direct intervention of specific groups and human agency in general in the interaction with an ever-wide opening of national and global institutions and governance, students will be able to put long-term political crises and current populist regressions in a broader political context. Expected learning outcomes include the knowledge and understanding of the principles and laws that protect those who are discriminated against. Students will learn to frame individual cases within the legal order, and to identify the rules applicable to the specific case-law examined, through a correct application in the legal field of the techniques of problem solving. Students will also learn to express autonomous assessments on the regulatory system and on the effects of rules on the equality and dignity of those groups who are discriminated against.