DLDG - Week 4: Re-thinking EU Law: the value of a de-colonial approach

‘Decolonisation of EU law’ constitutes a new starting point for examinations of EU law and EU integration which invites us at a minimum to de-centralise ‘euro-centric’ world views and ways of seeing – to describe European law as Eurocentric may sound like a contradiction but as Hesselink points out, this only appears contradictory from a Eurocentric point of view. A decolonial approach to EU law promotes a shift of vision from the mainstream to the margins and a way to “shake off a commitment to colonial ways of thinking” (Meghji 2020) for example, the common idea that all black people in Europe are ‘really’ from somewhere else. Perhaps most importantly, a decolonial approach to EU law can open up the world of European integration and EU law to a new generation of scholars and audiences who have hitherto not engaged with these areas of study due to the current predominance of exclusive perspectives. In this talk I will outline what I think is the purpose, practice and principles of a decolonial approach in EU law. I will then give two examples: first demonstrating what happens when we take a decolonial approach as the starting point for our introduction to EU law, and second what a decolonial approach can tell us about the impact of war on the EU.

• Miranda Fricker Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (OUP 2007)
• M. Jackson Sow (2022) ‘Ukrainian Refugees, Race and International Law’s Choice Between Order and Justice.’ American Journal of International Law, 116 (4) 698-709. DOI: 10.1017/ajil.2022.56.
• Bhambra (2017) ‘The Current Crisis of Europe: Refugees, Colonialism, and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism’ European Law Journal Vol 23(6)
• Hesselink, M. W. (2022) ‘EU private law injustices’, Yearbook of European Law, Volume 41, Pages 83–116, https://doi.org/10.1093/yel/yeac005 
• Kantola, J., Elomaaki, A., Gaweda, B., Miller, C., Ahrens, P., Berthet, V., (2023) “It’s Like Shouting to a Brick Wall”: Normative Whiteness and Racism in the European Parliament American Political Science Review 117, 1, 184–199 
• Jan Orbie, Antonio Salvador M. Alcazar III, Anissa Bougrea, Szilvia Nagy, Alvaro Oleart, Jonalyn C. Paz, Rahel W. Sebhatu, Tiffany G. Williams, Izabella Wódzka, 'Editorial: Decolonizing Rather than Decentring ‘Europe’', (2023), 28, European Foreign Affairs Review, Issue 1, pp. 1-8, https://kluwerlawonline.com/journalarticle/European+Foreign+Affairs+Review/28.1/EERR2023001 
• Jivraj, S ‘Towards anti-racist legal pedagogy: a resource’ (SLSA 2020) 37. Available at: https://research.kent.ac.uk/decolonising-law-schools/ (esp. p24 on core subjects)