ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will attempt to analyse the demands for criminalisation advanced by the so-called ‘new’ collective actors. This phenomenon, which takes a specific form in the Italian political context, will, however, also serve to introduce a more general analysis of a phenomenon, also new in Italy: namely, the increasing spread of a political and social activism expressing itself through a language of ‘victimisation’ (rather than that of ‘oppression’). The adoption of the status of victim betrays an indebtedness to the language and logic of criminal justice, though the relationship with the criminal justice system itself is by no means central for all such groups of victims. This shift from the paradigm of oppression to that of ‘victimisation’ reveals a reconceptualisation of the question of responsibility.
