Migration and Religion in International Law: Research-based Proposals for Inclusive, Resilient, and Multicultural Societies – MiReIL

For a full description click here

Principal Investigator:  Carmelo Danisi 

The complex interplay between religion and migration has been a persistent issue throughout history. This connection traces back to the modern era, when religious wars led to the persecution of various religious minorities, compelling them to migrate. In response, international regulations emerged to protect these minorities and were initially designed to preserve international peace and to promote trade. However, these norms also inadvertently supported the rights of migrating religious minorities from a modern human rights perspective. For example, the 1555 Augsburg Treaty both mandated subjects to follow their sovereign's religion and allowed religious minorities the right to relocate to states where the sovereign shared their faith, imposing an international duty on those states to welcome them.

In today's world, religion has resurfaced as a key identifier, resulting in renewed issues at the intersection of migration and religion. The academic focus has been either on religious freedom or on the broader human rights of migrants, lacking an intersectional perspective. While migration issues have received considerable attention in international law literature, freedom of religion, including its internal and external forums, has been mainly explored through the lens of international norms in the UN human rights system and regional human rights frameworks. These studies often overlook contributions from other disciplines that could enrich international law-based solutions. A new approach is therefore needed, one that bridges different aspects of the migration-religion relationship and engages with various disciplinary perspectives.

The significance of examining the migration-religion nexus becomes evident in the context of international refugee law, particularly concerning religious persecution. However, the migration-religion dynamic raises issues beyond persecution, including non-discrimination and social integration of migrants of all faiths. Balancing States’ sovereignty in religious regulation with individual rights, especially within Europe in light of the broad range of migrants’ background, continues to challenge policymakers. The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated this balance, as it was exemplified by migrants' religious-based objections to vaccination, as well as the use of technology, . Additionally, the intersection of migration and religion plays a role in violent extremism and religiously motivated terrorism, often stemming from the discrimination and lack of social integration migrants face due to their religious beliefs, leading to radicalization and new forms of racism, such as Islamophobia.

These considerations underscore the need for innovative solutions that address the interplay between States and the multicultural dynamics within societies experiencing increasing migratory flows. Achieving this task requires a comprehensive and systematic study of the migration-religion relationship within an international law framework, while also drawing on insights from other relevant disciplines. MiReIL aims to contribute to this challenge.

Website: MIREIL

Members of the Department

Filippo Andreatta,
Marco Balboni
Francesca Romana Partipilo
Alessandra Zanobetti

Teams of the following Universities are involved: Università di Trieste – Università di Roma La Sapienza – Università LUISS. For a full description click here

Publications

A Special Issue for the (open access) Journal Freedom, Security and Justice is expected to be published in 2025.
All publications will be available clicking here

Conferences, lectures and talks

• Migrazioni: accesso, accoglienza, integrazione, panel of the event Costruire la convivenza internazionale, University of Bologna – Forlì campus, 14 April 2024
• International Law and Religious Profiling in Multicultural Societies, seminar at University of Sarajevo (BiH), 22 April 2024
• Religious Extremism and Return of ISIS Women in Europe, seminar at University of Bologna – Forlì campus, 9 May 2024
• Migrazioni, diritto e religione, training for lawyers in cooperation with Ordine Avvocati Ravenna e Fondazione Forense Ravennate, MAR – Ravenna, 16 April 2024

All events, including those of other local research units, click here