Fighting Violence across Borders: From Victimhood to Feminist Struggles

Enrica Rigo is an associate professor at the University of Roma Tre where she holds the chair in Philosophy of Law and coordinates a legal clinic program on migration and asylum. She earned her PhD in the Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Theory at the University of Naples and was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research interests include critical legal theory, theories of citizenship, gender and asylum and border studies. She is the author of numerous articles on migration, borders, and justice, including a monograph on European citizenship. For the last 20 years, Rigo has been involved as an activist in the Italian and European movement in support of migrants’ rights.

Francesca De Masi directs the antitrafficking section of Be Free, a Rome-based association against gender violence and trafficking. She received a degree in sociology in 2003, and since 1999 she has worked with women escaping gender violence. She manages a shelter for women who have faced sexual exploitation and a help desk inside the “Ponte Galeria” Deportation Centre where she provides legal and psycho-social support to detained women. Her experience in supporting migrant women is documented in two books: Storie di Ponte e di Frontiere (Stories of a Bridge and Frontiers) published in 2010 and Inter/rotte: Storie di Tratta, Percorsi di Resistenze (Interrupted/Routes: Stories of Human Trafficking, Paths of Resistance) published in 2016.