Abstract

The recent global migration has increased the multicultural profile of the European societies characterized by the presence in the same geographic space of a multitude of ethnic minorities with particular ways of life, religion and traditions. In such a complex reality inevitably arise conflicts that require the intervention of criminal law. The model of criminal policy developed in the European countries to manage these conflicts is contradictory. On the one hand, it protects diversity in the face of racist and xenophobic behaviour, but at the same time it stigmatizes cultural minorities through the criminalization of certain traditions or rituals qualified as barbarians and primitive. This article addresses the ambivalence that underlies this model of cultural diversity management.