Papers by Deborah De Felice
The aim of this article is to reconceptualise the notion of child trafficking by seeking to under... more The aim of this article is to reconceptualise the notion of child trafficking by seeking to understand child vulnerability and agency. The research approach focuses on criminal judgements pronounced in Italian courts and assesses how institutional interpretations support perceptions of vulnerability or agency that are often promoted or defined by criminal law perspectives. The attempt is to investigate human trafficking both as a multifaceted phenomenon and as a process to link together the functioning of elements of the human trafficking system that as a prism assumes different shapes in a growing complexity.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Combating (child) human trafficking: A challenge between repression tools and detection of vulnerability, 2022
The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Ital... more The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Italy and France. The aim is to describe how Italy and France intercept the UFMs to European coasts, and how they are identified and guided to specific reception facilities by examining the data and available references. The focus is on the legal dimension of the "non-reception system". These are cases in which states have been convicted of violating children's rights. How the Western world has tried to institutionalise the concept of children's rights is closely related to the concept and operating modes of legal principles and "cultures". In a way, the study of legal culture represents a measure on of laws. In this paper, we highlight the usefulness of analysing the principle of the best interest of child (BIC), introduced in the ideal-typical configuration as a free formulation, which can only be understood based on the interpretation of Courts' decisions taken on behalf of UFMs.
Oñati socio-legal series, Oct 4, 2022
The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants’ (UFMs) access paths in Ital... more The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants’ (UFMs) access paths in Italy and France. The aim is to describe how Italy and France intercept the UFMs to European coasts, and how they are identified and guided to specific reception facilities by examining the data and available references. The focus is on the legal dimension of the “non- reception system”. These are cases in which states have been convicted of violating children’s rights. How the Western world has tried to institutionalise the concept of children’s rights is closely related to the concept and operating modes of legal principles and “cultures”. In a way, the study of legal culture represents a measure on of laws. In this paper, we highlight the usefulness of analysing the principle of the best interest of child (BIC), introduced in the ideal- typical configuration as a free formulation, which can only be understood based on the interpretation of Courts’ decisions taken on behalf of UFMs.
Vol. 12 No. 6: Legal culture and empirical research, 2022
The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Ital... more The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Italy and France. The aim is to describe how Italy and France intercept the UFMs to European coasts, and how they are identified and guided to specific reception facilities by examining the data and available references. The focus is on the legal dimension of the "non-reception system". These are cases in which states have been convicted of violating children's rights. How the Western world has tried to institutionalise the concept of children's rights is closely related to the concept and operating modes of legal principles and "cultures". In a way, the study of legal culture represents a measure on of laws. In this paper, we highlight the usefulness of analysing the principle of the best interest of child (BIC), introduced in the ideal-typical configuration as a free formulation, which can only be understood based on the interpretation of Courts' decisions taken on behalf of UFMs.
OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES, 2022
The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Ital... more The paper analyses the topic of unaccompanied foreign minor migrants' (UFMs) access paths in Italy and France. The aim is to describe how Italy and France intercept the UFMs to European coasts, and how they are identified and guided to specific reception facilities by examining the data and available references. The focus is on the legal dimension of the "non-reception system". These are cases in which states have been convicted of violating children's rights. How the Western world has tried to institutionalise the concept of children's rights is closely related to the concept and operating modes of legal principles and "cultures". In a way, the study of legal culture represents a measure on of laws. In this paper, we highlight the usefulness of analysing the principle of the best interest of child (BIC), introduced in the ideal-typical configuration as a free formulation, which can only be understood based on the interpretation of Courts' decisions taken on behalf of UFMs.
SocietàMutamentoPolitica: Rivista Italiana di Sociologia, 2020
The paper reflects on the potential of some restorative justice tools read as inclusion practices... more The paper reflects on the potential of some restorative justice tools read as inclusion practices in the juvenile criminal sphere and extendable to the field of immigrant minors. The scenario involving both types of minors is the context of economic, social and family fragility on which the challenge of inclusion is played – most often missed, in the first case, and, perhaps, future, in the second. The context of analysis is that of a path of mediation experienced in the Brazilian reality. Brazil is a territory with high social stratification that recalls central themes of social and intercultural coexistence. It provides an example of how mediation logic and practices can rise to category and interpretative tools to understand complex and contradictory dynamics of integration and at the same time marginalization and exclusion, which in contemporary times characterize, starting from Simmel's words, relationships with "the other", "the stranger", the "for...
Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2021
The aim of this article is to reconceptualise the notion of child trafficking by seeking to under... more The aim of this article is to reconceptualise the notion of child trafficking by seeking to understand child vulnerability and agency. The research approach focuses on criminal judgements pronounced in Italian courts and assesses how institutional interpretations support perceptions of vulnerability or agency that are often promoted or defined by criminal law perspectives. The attempt is to investigate human trafficking both as a multifaceted phenomenon and as a process to link together the functioning of elements of the human trafficking system that as a prism assumes different shapes in a growing complexity.
SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE, 2018
The food, the relationship with it, is the territory in which from the earliest childhood begins ... more The food, the relationship with it, is the territory in which from the earliest childhood begins to build the structure of what will then be the basis of the balancing of relationships between norm, wellness dimension, and individual fulfilment, self-reliant and hetero- detection regulation. Within this scenario, the attention is on the forms and terms in which the territory, here understood as the government of the territory and limited to the Region of Sicily, responds on the institutional level through the recognition and qualification on the legal level of a declination of the Eating Disorder (ED) as a social problem - with a specific focus on younger age. The attempt is to emulate food as a symbolic territory useful in exercising control forms and subjectivity building, highlighting the size of problems that accompany both the possibilities of analysis and the planning of possible interventions.
SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO, 2019
The International Journal of Children's Rights, 2017
The complex relationship between children online and digital technologies is the starting point o... more The complex relationship between children online and digital technologies is the starting point of this reflection of a growing process of multidisciplinary theoretical attention to building children’s biographies. On the one hand, the concepts of “risk and childhood safety” have become increasingly central in institutional discourses. The content of this attention seems, however, to assume more the form of adults’ fears, dealing with an endless struggle for a utopian safety for their children, than the reality of what really can be a “risk” for children online. On the other hand, the current changes in the representations of childhood are increasingly oriented to a vision of the child as the subject of its own history and therefore more active and participatory. This makes it difficult to manage the distinction between adults and children and is problematic for the use of traditional parenting styles. Starting from a reflection on the main theoretical perspectives that have been co...
Minorigiustizia, Apr 1, 2011
New developments in biotechnology and their implications for criminal justice have brought the na... more New developments in biotechnology and their implications for criminal justice have brought the nature vs. nurture debate into poignant relief in recent years. Poorly articulated and for many years biased towards the knowledge traditions of the hard sciences, however, the debate yearns for a basic dualistic reformulation to come up to speed with the contemporary needs of society. Four levels of contention – epistemology, mankind’s place in the scale of life, singularity and the naturalistic fallacy - are traced through a review of the literature and theoretical thinking on this issue as it has developed over time. A unitary science that embraces both the biological and the social is required to match the pressing demands of biotechnological advances and handle their direct impact on the interpretation of deviant behavior in the courtroom.
New developments in biotechnology and their implications for criminal justice have brought the na... more New developments in biotechnology and their implications for criminal justice have brought the nature vs. nurture debate into poignant relief in recent years. Poorly articulated and for many years biased towards the knowledge traditions of the hard sciences, however, the debate yearns for a basic dualistic reformulation to come up to speed with the contemporary needs of society. Four levels of contention – epistemology, mankind’s place in the scale of life, singularity and the naturalistic fallacy - are traced through a review of the literature and theoretical thinking on this issue as it has developed over time. An unitary science that embraces both the biological and the social is required to match the pressing demands of biotechnological advances and handle their direct impact on the interpretation of deviant behavior in the courtroom.
The focus of this book is to offer some areas of public reflection on migration and its effects o... more The focus of this book is to offer some areas of public reflection on migration and its effects on local processes through the study of a specific category of migrants: the separated children. This category is part of the main migratory flow towards Southern Europe but, as minors and with no adults responsible for them, they are entitled to specific rights, and local services have to be provided for their integration. This category of migrants has been considered to be the “crossing point” of many normative systems, and highlights dissonances of migration policies and inequalities in the welfare systems of Southern Europe. Throughout the book, the category of separated children has further been analysed through a comparison of European legal systems, a description of the ways in which these children are hosted on the Sicilian territory, and in-depth interviews focusing on their expectations and dilemmas. The issue of separated children, as migrants and minors, strongly questions the...
Uploads
Papers by Deborah De Felice