Samenvatting

The article reflects on the conceptual work undertaken during the first year of ALTERNATIVE, a project coordinated by KU Leuven. The overall objective of the project is to provide an alternative and deepened understanding of justice and security based on empirical evidence of how to handle conflicts within intercultural contexts, mainly through the active participation of citizens. The paper focuses mainly on the relation of the concept of citizenship with restorative justice, especially as viewed and enacted in the four intercultural settings of the ALTERNATIVE project. Several issues are discussed: the concept of participatory citizenship in relation to crime and conflict; the claim of the discourse of restorative justice to the concept of participatory citizenship and democracy and the challenges in the restorative justice discourse that complicate its relationship to participatory citizenship. Next, insight is provided in the ways the ALTERNATIVE project tries to tackle some of these challenges, by exploring and strengthening the relationship between the concept of active citizenship and justice in Europe. By targeting the intercultural field the ALTERNATIVE aims to explore the potential of mediation services and restorative justice models to engage with macro societal conflicts that are not referred to these services by the criminal justice system, and on the other hand expand the way some of the crimes referred by the criminal justice system are handled by the mediation services alternatively by fostering alliances with various civil society organisations. Employing ‘action research’ methodology, it is argued that the concept and framework of ‘nodal governance’ (Shearing and Wood, 2003) can serve to support participatory modes of conflict regulation. Interactive settings are created, which allow for spaces between informal and formal justice, and between justice mechanisms at the individual and at the societal level (Aertsen, 2001, 2008). Arguments are provided in support of the need to promote broader models of restorative justice which are able to address social and systemic crimes and conflicts, and which will help the theory and practice of RJ to move beyond the individualisation of crime and its remedies.