The Concept of the “Other”: Citizenship and Formalized Identity Building Processes in Europe

Analyzing the concept of freedom of movement both in accordance with the norms of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and in the case law of the Court of Strasbourg (ECtHR), it has emerged that there are some malfunctions in the regulation and control of the migratory phenomena in the European context that are structural and inevitable. These malfunctions also have some repercussions on the processes of identity building. In fact, inasmuch as we identify ourselves with the liberal-democratic regimes which form our communities, the characteristic institutions and norms of such regimes represent a fundamental reference for the processes of identity building of both the community and the individuals forming it. In this regard, human rights contribute to creating these normative frameworks inasmuch as they can influence the rules and the principles of a specific legal system. Indeed, in an ongoing context of multilevel constitutionalism, the ever-growing influence that international institutions and treaties (declarations, covenants, conventions, protocols and so on) have on member states, permits human rights to enter the processes of identity building in the European countries. The processes contributing to the self-comprehension of a political community need the formal structures of identity building, such as citizenship and freedom of movement, especially in the face of the global migratory phenomena, to operate correctly. From that point of view, malfunctions in the formal structures cannot but actually do have effects on the same processes of identity building. The way that the mobility theme is regulated by the ECHR can become a privileged point of observation for the study and analysis of identity building, and of its impasses, contradictions, aporias. This paper intends to show how the absence of the right of immigration can create some malfunctions in the human rights law and how this is connected with our concept of identity. The failure of our migration control system and the impossibility of empowering human rights in the field of mobility reveals an enormous conceptual short-circuit in the structure of liberal countries in Europe, involving the relationship between the Self and the “Other”.