Immigration, Family Life and EU Citizenships: Challenges to the Concept of Human Dignity

This paper focuses on the right to respect for family life, and especially on family reunification. In recent years, family reunification has become a fundamental channel of immigration and, at the same time, family has proved to be a major instrument of eligibility to welfare benefits. The right of immigrants to family life reveals interesting – and often neglected – connections between individual, social, cultural and political rights and at the same time has proved to be an arena for multiple cleavages of discrimination. Growing socio-cultural diversity in Europe, which is to some extent due to the migration flows reaching our continent, tells us that if this right is to be effective it must not be considered as gender-neutral, or culture-neutral. In fact, family life reflects different cultures and views about family, work, genderization of social roles and of relationships among individuals and groups, between parents and children, and between institutions and normative codes in the religious and public spheres. With regard to this, the paper briefly examines recent developments involving family life that have characterized the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and of the European Court of Justice. I believe that they may shed some light on important current trends in the building of a European citizenship and on the European mechanisms of multilevel protection of rights: these trends directly affect many sensitive problems of discrimination. Finally, the paper focus on the challenges posed by immigration to European citizenship, especially if the aim is that of promoting a citizenship capable of tackling the ethnic and gender discrimination that has historically marked the national development of citizenship.