SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter argues that the challenges of diversity management in post-modern Europe are now more visibly pushing them all to acknowledge that simplistic, state-centric methods of handling difference and diversity are no longer sufficient. Research shows how continuing reluctance to embrace pluralist methodologies for rebalancing family law regulation in Europe risks leading to deeply messy scenarios, in which states risk losing credibility, control and power, unless they learn to improve their handling of such complex new conflicts. This chapter sought to take a constructive theoretical perspective, facing the simmering conflicts rather than denying that they exist as legal contests and shooting them into an imagined extra-legal space. Up in the air, there are certainly fewer assumed or actual fixed boundaries or prescribed roads, dynamism becomes super-dynamism, and subtle changes of navigational guidance may bring truly significant changes of direction. The chapter uses image, real fears of crashing seem to motivate the current plurality-conscious rebalancing of family law regulation in Europe.