Research Interests
Labour and human rights; post-national, transnational and intercultural relations; policies and practices of inclusion/exclusion; local reception of globalization processes; dynamics of structural violence and definitions of deviance; the chasm between what people say they do and what they actually do.
Research Area(s)
Italy
Profile
Lucia Facchini holds an MA in Sociology with a focus on international migration and intercultural relations (Osnabrück University, Germany) and a BA in East Asian Studies (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy). In her current doctoral research she investigates questions of sustainable coexistence and housing practices in a province in Lombardy (northern Italy). Her starting point is an ongoing conflict related to indiscriminate evictions in a district characterized by high rates of international migration. Owners and tenants − regular and irregular residents alike − are in danger of being evicted from buildings slated for demolition. In this situation, relationships among actors seem to be conceived of in terms of a sort of ‘bundle of wrongs’, whereby both private actors and institutions are inscribed in reified schemes of mutual guilt. This raises questions about the extent to which the principles of transparency, participation and appeal are implemented, and for whom. The housing question is used here as a lens through which Facchini explores contemporary factors of institutional, economic and ethno-religious distress, with a particular focus on the unsustainable political and economic capitalization of migration processes in contemporary Italy, and the social and environmental impacts of housing and urban policies. Facchini’s master’s thesis, Migration and asylum according to the European Neighbourhood Policy from 2003 to 2010, based on document analysis, examined the goals of and responses to externalization policies aimed at migration and asylum flows from and through neighbouring non-EU countries.
Why Law & Anthropology?
"Jurisprudence and judicial procedure are but one part of the life of a legal system. Qualitative, field-based anthropological research allows me to identify and interpret which legal precepts and proceedings people implement, strategically avoid, or are prevented from applying. This is not to imply that law is a fiction; it is, rather, a social fact that, as a constellation of historically and geographically situated interests, can be a source of uncertainty, injustice, and destitution in and of itself. An anthropological approach to law and its implementation is central to my attempt to analyse the coexistence of people differentially entitled to reside and operate in a certain political space, and who thereby can or cannot use the same order of rule as a practicable tool to obtain and safeguard specific social rights."