The Right to International Protection in the Face of Double Standards and the Dark Side of Group Logic: Anthropological Reflections

This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of group logic in the recognition of in ternational protection, starting from the differentiated treatment given to Ukrainian citizens following the outbreak of the conflict in 2022. The reflections aim to uncover the normative and political rationale behind management tools. In fact, the legal categories within the protection procedure, built on a group logic such as national ity, present an ambiguity that deserves to be critically examined: on one hand, they have become instruments of protection, but on the other, they have exacerbated the labeling process, making them exclusionary and sources of fundamental rights violations. Moreover, the proliferation of categorical distinctions fails to embrace the complexity that characterizes contemporary migration flows and, instead, becomes a dysfunctional mechanism, entangled in the problematic integration between the universal-individual logic of vulnerability and that of the group