Cycle 35 (2019/2020)
35th Cycle: Alessia Leofreddi, Valentin Mahou, Martina Mignardi, Stipisic Teuta, Yadi Zhou
Alessia Leofreddi
Religious Freedom in Context: A Comparison between Indonesia and Australia
This project aims to analyse the attitudes towards religious freedom in two different contexts of cultural and religious diversity: Australia and Indonesia. The case of Indonesia represents a country-model with the largest Muslim population and high control of religious expressions, and respects religious freedom of the six officially recognized religions. The case of Australia is characterized by high-level of religious pluralism and diversity, which includes the one-third of religious nones. The objective of this research is to analyse the social perception of religious freedom within both the Indonesian and Australian population – particularly focusing on young people’s views. This will be achieved through the application of quantitative methods and the submission of questionnaires to young people, complemented by in-depth qualitative interviews. The comparison of these two social contexts aims to explore how religious freedom is affected by political and social conditions in contrasting environments of Indonesia and Australia. These countries have, prima facie, more differences than similarities pertaining to religious composition, political conditions, legal frameworks and patterns of religious governance for the implementation of human rights. The presence of a Muslim majority in Indonesia and religious diversity in Australia signify a first notable difference in two countries. Besides, the views and perceptions of religious freedom among the social arena both Indonesia and Australia are still not investigated. In order to pursue this objective, the research project leverages on the following research questions:
1) To what extent the presence of dominant religion and religious diversity influence young people’s views on religious freedom;
2) If and how patterns of religious pluralism and management of cultural and religious diversity contexts affect the social perception on religious freedom;
3) If and how political conditions and human rights culture in both the countries impact upon the personal and collective attitudes towards religious freedom.
Valentin Mahou
The intensification of major natural disasters worldwide is concerning and affecting all kind of populations regardless of their ethnicity, wealth, gender, sexual orientation or age.
If plenty of researches are lead on gender equality, ethnic minorities, age, wealth and social classes in disaster contexts , very few are focusing on sexual and gender minorities (or LGBTQ+: Lesbian, gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queer, Intersex and other non-heterosexual and non-cisgender individuals).
In the meantime, LGBTQ+ everywhere, at different level of intensity depending of the geography and the sexual orientation and gender identity, are considered more vulnerable and experiencing discriminations in the society.
Passed examples show that during disasters emergency relief access is not equal to everyone and especially to the LGBTQ+ communities, mainly due to religious, legal and inclusion issues: rape and molestation of gays and lesbians in shelters in Haiti, access refused to transgender people to shower facilities in New Orleans, exclusion of mono parental families in family compensation program in Australia. And even if the emergency aid access is provided, the safety of those individuals is, in most of the cases, not guaranteed. Furthermore the discriminatory aid providing process of some openly religious and homophobic NGO’s and relief providers is implementing this multi-factor pattern of discrimination while nourishing a non-trusted climate between aid providers and the minorities. A paralleled network for mutual help is then organized mainly through the virtual space (social medias, community platforms, chats). Those channels of communication could be explored by aid and development stockholder to build a trusted link between them and the LGBTQ+ communities in need.
This research aims to highlight the main issues that are facing non-heterosexual or/and non-cisgender individuals during crisis times in different places of the planet. Another goal is to map and frame this not yet explored field to allow deeper research in the future. It could also bring a visibility of the strength and weaknesses of the equal access to humanitarian aid in case of disaster. It may highlight if the emergency stakeholders are able to guarantee basic Human Rights to every individual in their aid process. Moreover, no research currently exists on the role of digital spaces as interfaces between non-discriminatory emergency stakeholders and the individuals in need.
Martina Mignardi
Congregations and Human Rights: A Comparison between Italy and Croatia
The relationship between religion and human rights became a matter of detailed analysis depicting the controversial nature of their negotiations.
One particular aspect of this relationship is that religion has to be considered as a dynamic social phenomenon conceptualized in terms of practices of worship, contemplation, socialization, and involvement in religious groups’ activities including human rights and humanitarian action. In Western societies, these practices and interactions occur mainly within the social form of congregations or religious communities. Understanding of dynamic processes related to changing social forms, characteristics, and activities of congregations together with the related human rights issues will be the main focus of this research.
In this project, two societal processes that shaped the contemporary social dynamics of religious congregations are considered as challenging the traditional collective forms of religious life and thus the relationship of religion and human rights. They are religious diversity and conditions of post-secularism. The context of post-secularism emphasized the return of religion in the public sphere and its implications for cultural, social and religious processes. Religious diversity is a peculiar feature of contemporary European societies that constitutes a factor of social and cultural change. The transition from a religious monoculture to forms of religious pluralism is producing an unexpected change also in the socio-religious geography of Italy and Croatia.
This research will apply the quantitative methods of research and as well use the mapping studies for the analysis of religious diversity in Italy and Croatia, detecting the different locally based congregations with their particular organizations. This project will explore what kind of human rights (civil, economic, social, cultural rights, women’s rights, environmental rights, and other) are mostly addressed in Italian and Croatian congregations, and how various structural conditions in congregations relate to the support of particular human rights.
Stipisic Teuta
Religious Minorities and Religious Freedom: A Comparison of Croatia and Spain
The objective of this project is to compare and understand how the religion-state governance in two Catholic countries, Croatia and Spain, manage and control religious diversity and religious liberties in the case of minorities. It will also review the governance mechanisms that each country uses and their effects on the religious majority and minorities. Furthermore, it would lead to exploring majority-minority relations of the countries and to what extent they manage to maintain inter religious dialogue. Taking a closer look at their relations, one of the aspects of investigation would be to explore the patterns of religious majority/minority nexus, relations between different minorities, their ambit of interaction, points of conflict and openness to developing and maintaining inter religious dialogue and social order. The main effort of this research would be to understand how each State manages the processes of recognition and accommodation of minority religious groups implementing religious freedom standards. Along with the study of legal and political factors that affect the status of religious groups in society, this project will focus on the study of attitudes of religious minorities related to the perception of religious freedom and human rights in Croatian and Spanish society, as well as the patterns of relationship between religious minorities established by religious freedom policies. This project will address three research questions: What are the mechanisms of religion-state governance in two Catholic countries and how they function in managing religious diversity and liberty for religious minorities both in Croatia and Spain? What kind of relationship is produced by religious freedom regimes between religious majority and religious minorities in Croatia and Spain, and what kind of specific socio-political features determine them? What are the patterns of religious freedom perception among religious minorities in Spain and Croatia? This research project would be carried out by a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. It will apply the quantitative methodology of sociological analysis of perception of religious freedom adapting it to Croatian and Spanish contexts.
Yadi Zhou
Improving Access to Minority Education in Developing & Developed World: A Relative
Comparison of Vietnam & Italy
A relative comparison of the ground-level realities in terms of the actual implementation of the United Nations resolutions and directives show that there is a profound difference between the situation in developing and the developed world. There exist issues in western societies, but the issues found in the developing world, particularly in countries such as Vietnam are significantly higher in magnitude and seriousness. The problem is that in countries such as Vietnam there are significant differences in the education level of majority and minority communities with the latter group having minimal access to even basic education, let alone the higher educational opportunities. This leads to the research question as to what is the current state of affairs in the area of minority education in the world and to carry out a relative comparison between one country from developing and developed world.
The purpose of the study is to carry out a comparative analysis between the major challenges and issues which are hindering the dissemination of the right to education in the minority communities of Vietnam and Italy. An understanding of the factors which impact the education of minorities in these economies of the developing and developed world could go a long way to understand and design procedures to eliminate or minimise those factors, learn from the mistakes of each other and pave the way for their systematic and planned removal.
This research design is intended to carry out a relative analysis of the two countries of Vietnam in Asia and Italy in Europe in order to find out the state of minority education in these countries. Both of them were chosen because they represent two opposite faces of the education system, one being an advanced country of the developed world, while the other being a relatively developing country of the developing world. A relative comparison of these countries would not only help to find out the gaps between the educational systems in terms of the right to minority education but also the gaps between the ideal or expected state of minority education and the actual state of affairs in these countries. Given that these two represent the extreme ends of the education system, an average result from these extremes would also help to provide a solution which could apply to most countries of the world with certain variations.