On March 12 2024, the RE-WIRING team presented the findings of our project at the conference “Systemic discrimination and the law. Conceptualization and legal remedies”. The conference was organised within the framework of the Horizon Europe project UNDETERRED (Unintentional discrimination detected and racism revealed and deactivated), a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarity project on systemic and unintentional discrimination. The event was held at the University of Barcelona, one of the UNDETERRED project’s partners.
The first panel foresaw two presentations on the conceptual approaches to systemic discrimination, one devoted to the European Court of Human Rights’ approach to the issue (Ms. Inessa Sakhno), and the second on the RE-WIRING Transformative Equality Approach (Dr Caroline Perrin and Dr Elena Ghidoni). The second panel moved to the case studies on the concept, bringing insights from the Belgian case on positive action in the labour market (Dr Sara Vancleef), the case of Afghan women refugees (Dr Türkan Ertuna Lagrand), and the case of segregation in education under the European Convention of Human Rights (Ms. Merel Vrancken). The last session was devoted to the quantitative results of the UNDETERRED project, and a roundtable with presentations of country reports on the national approaches to systemic discrimination. Ms. Jitske Mink presented the findings of research conducted in the Netherlands, under the co-supervision of Prof. Linda Senden from University of Utrecht.
The conference fostered a thriving conceptual debate around the definition of systemic discrimination and the difference/relation with other concepts (e.g. structural, institutional discrimination, segregation, persecution). Moreover, it offered a broad overview of how the issue is dealt with in different national and supranational contexts, especially in laws and case law.
The RE-WIRING team members, Dr Caroline Perrin and Dr Elena Ghidoni, presented the RE-WIRING project’s goals and methodology, and the Transformative Equality Approach, focusing on the project’s understanding of the concept of systemic inequality, drawn from our Review of Concepts and Taxonomy (D1.1). The presentation further emphasised the findings on good practices to increase women’s representation in leadership positions in both the public and private sphere (D2.1).
The involvement of the University of Utrecht in both UNDETERRED and RE-WIRING projects will enable fruitful exchanges and cross-fertilization between the two projects, and the conference in Barcelona was a first successful space for this knowledge exchange.
Leave a Reply