This book addresses one of the most serious societal questions of our time: how to create new spaces and frameworks for minority recognition given the State-centric sovereignty discourse and the persisting equality jargon that dominate today’s world. By so doing it approaches minority rights by means of a critical engagement with its underlying premises. Notably, it makes attempts to both construct and reconfigure neglected legal categories, in particular collective rights, and to deconstruct domestic constitutional orders. More precisely, it does so through diametrically opposed levels of analysis, that is top-down and bottom-up logics, by exploring sociolegal strategies, forms and formats of governance on the one hand, and grassroots demands on the other. Drawing on empirical findings in Europe and Latin America, the book gives us a sense of how recognition needs to be contextualised against the background of right-wing trends in Europe and the re-building of the State in the Andes. This is a fascinating study of one of the key questions engaging human rights, minority studies and discrimination law.
ForewordMarie-Claire Foblets Preface Felipe González Morales 1. Introductory Remarks: Minority Recognition and its Transformative Potential – Critically Engaging with the Diversity Deficit Jessika Eichler (Sciences Po Paris, France) and Kyriaki Topidi (European Centre for Minority Issues, Germany) Part I Theorising Recognition: (De)constructing Minorities in the Law and Elsewhere 2. Making Social Groups Visible to and in Law – Essentialisation and Law’s Generality Miodrag Jovanovic (University of Belgrade, Serbia) 3. Politicising Differences, Fighting Inequalities: Quilombolas in Brazil Sergio Costa (Free University of Berlin, Germany) 4. Collectivising Human Rights or Scales of Collectivisation: Andean Constitutionalism and other Juridical Points of Departure Jessika Eichler (Sciences Po, France) Part II Pluralism from the Top and Below: The Multiplicity of Paradigms of Recognition 5. Why Do the Old-Established Nation States Fail to Recognise Minorities? Case Studies from France Catherine Wihtol de Wenden (Sciences Po, France) 6. Participation of Minorities in Public Life: The Political Background and Central Role of Minority Self-governments in Hungary Balázs Vizi (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) 7. State Recognition and Religious Minority Group Agency in a European Context Kyriaki Topidi (European Centre for Minority Issues, Germany) 8. Is Multiculturalism a Satisfactory Framework to Address Religious Diversity? Eugenia Relaño Pastor (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) Part III Minority Recognition in Sociolegal Strategies and Frameworks 9. Freedom of Expression Revisited: Limiting Free Speech to Stop Silencing Women and Vulnerable Minorities Mia Caielli (Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy) 10. Building Bridges between Dismissal Protection and Non-discrimination Law: Reopening the Debate on Equality Principles and Social Groups Ceren Kasim (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany)
Jessika Eichler is Associate at the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute and trAndeS, FU Berlin, and a HDR candidate with Sciences Po Paris, France. Kyriaki Topidi is Senior Researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues, Germany.
