Alterità e potere punitivo nello scenario europeo contemporaneo. Spunti a sostegno di un approccio critico post-coloniale

In the wake of recent works that promote a post-colonial reinterpretation of the "criminal question", the paper proposes to mark the starting point of an investigation focused on the links between punitive power, otherness and othering, in contemporary Europe, in a perspective of valorisation of the colonial roots of this union, according to a "long-term" reading. Therefore, the work provides, first of all, some basic coordinates relating to the concepts of otherness and othering, and then proposes an overview of some "sectors of exercise of penal power" that are - or seem to be - mainly or mostly affected by the encounter with – or the construction of - "the other", namely that of the management of migratory flows and the criminalization of migration and that of culturally motivated crimes.