Book Review: Structural Injustice and Workers’ Rights by Virginia Mantouvalou
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627231204825 |
| Author | Luca Ratti |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
The principle of human dignity was for too long assumed to be self-evident, and little attention was
paid to the legal consequences of this principle. Now, the declared contradiction between the identity
and protection of the national community and the protection of human dignity has been heightened.
Human dignity as the foundation of other human rights has recently triggered attacks on alleged judicial
activism, intensified during the migration crisis in Europe. At the same time, the treatment of numerous
asylum seekers has become a true test of the acceptance of the principle of human dignity. Cesare Pinelli
describes how individual governments have ‘escaped’responsibility, while also, however, highlighting
the weaknesses of the Dublin system. The distinction between two versions of national identity and
community can provide a theoretical underpinning: identity as sameness implies a different approach
from identity as selfhood. Selfhood is more open, inclusive, whereas populist discourse is fixated on
national identity as sameness, portraying migrants as strangers. This allows populists to incite fear
and hostility towards these migrants, and becomes a political tool.
Stéphanie Henette-Vauchez points out that the ‘success story’of the principle of human dignity
in Europe required a series of unique preconditions to be met, and that its gradual consolidation was
also linked to the absence for many years of serious challenges. According to the author, the
concept of human dignity was originally a kind of extension of the concept of honour, originally
reserved for the aristocracy; this is quite a debatable thesis, since from the beginning we have
had two concepts of human dignity, including one in which it is not derived from any merit or
status, but from an inherent human characteristic.
Maria Disacola’s analysis of the issue of the right to citizenship in the context of human dignity
is similarly realistic. She focuses on a comparison of regulations and case law in the United
Kingdom and the United States. and shows –freely and openly –the weakness of existing citizen-
ship law, in which the assumptions related to human dignity have often been relativised.
This work is an excellent but rather pessimistic diagnosis; what we could now do with, in my
view, are more ‘proposed therapies’. In addition to the insightful analyses of the threats to
human dignity and democracy in Europe, we need, in the conclusion, more de lege ferenda
remarks, pointing to potential solutions.
ORCID iD
Irena Ewa Lipowicz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6794-6683
Virginia Mantouvalou, Structural Injustice and Workers’Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 208 pp,
ISBN 9-780-1928-5715-6.
Reviewed by: Luca Ratti ,Associate Professor of European and Comparative Labour Law, University of Luxembourg
DOI: 10.1177/13882627231204825
What happened to the emancipatory role of the law in strengthening workers’uneven bargaining
power and addressing the inequality inherent in the employment relationship?
92 European Journal of Social Security 26(1)
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