Destrooper, Tine

Front matter - 2025.


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Transitional justice is commonly associated with post-conflict or democratizing contexts. Yet, its language and mechanisms are increasingly mobilized in a wide range of contexts, including in consolidated democracies, where they are invoked to address colonial legacies, systemic violence, and historical injustices. This article examines how victims and grassroots actors expand transitional justice’s conceptual and geographic scope, challenge state-centered approaches and formulate new modalities and objectives. Focusing on European cases, and the French context in particular, it argues that viewing transitional justice as an ecosystem better captures its evolving role in contemporary struggles for truth, recognition, and reparation.