Contemporary European societies are increasingly diverse. Migration both within and to Europe has contributed over the past decades to the rise of new religious, ethnic, social, cultural and economic inequalities. Such transformations have raised questions about the (multi-level) governance of diversity in Europe, thus determining new challenges for both scholars and policy-makers.

Whilst the debate around diversity has become a major topic in political practices, further academic investigation and conceptualization are still needed. Among the political fields where ‘managing diversity’ has become particularly pressing, migration, LGBTIQ and subnational minorities represent some of the hottest subjects of concern (Prügl and Thiel 2009). Starting from the empirical investigation of these and similar topics, this multidisciplinary panel uses political, legal and sociological argumentations to explore the issue of diversity through the lens of (structural and political) intersectionality. In doing so, it contributes to elucidating on why an intersectional approach is necessary for facing the new diversity-related challenges in European polity.

In particular, this panel discusses emerging forms of “social movement intersectionality in action” (Chun et al. 2013) – such as Romani women’s mobilization –, and uses the lived experiences of Romani LGBTIQ people to introduce the concept of queer intersectionalities (Fremlova, forthcoming). Furthermore, it illustrates how structural intersectionality can contribute to the legal analysis of complex inequality cases, and employs ‘Roma westward migration’ in Europe to foster the understanding of the production (and reproduction) of marginality into European ethnically targeted policies.