ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

‘Thou Shalt Swim with Mixed Genders'

Citizenship
Gender
Islam
National Identity
Religion
Courts
Jurisprudence
Yussef Al Tamimi
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Yussef Al Tamimi
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Abstract

On 10 January 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that obligatory mixed-gender swimming for schoolgirls against the will of their Muslim parents did not violate the right to religious freedom (Osmanoğlu and Kocabaş v. Switzerland). Weighing the role of integration against the right to religious freedom, the Court found that the obligation to swim with mixed genders is justified given its integration function. Taking this recent judgment as a case study, I would like to investigate the Court’s approach to the effects of legal norms on the experience of a sense of belonging. Firstly, while the Court identifies the integration function of mixed-gender swimming, it disregards the disintegrative effects of an obligation to do so. The judgment is more far-reaching than a ruling concerning the burqa, given the number of Muslim children forced to swim, and many families that will change schools or homeschool their children as a result of the obligation – evidently contrary to the purpose of social integration. Secondly, the Court’s lack of consideration for the sense of belonging is also markedly clear in other cases regarding religious freedom, such as Leyla Şahin v. Turkey. The Court ruled that Turkey did not violate the applicant’s religious freedom by banning her from university for wearing a headscarf, without further regard to the possible effects of the State’s ban on the applicant’s sense of membership and belonging. Thirdly, the ‘politics of belonging’ is palpable in these Court cases given the perpetuation of a perceived incompatibility of belonging to the nation and simultaneously belong to their religious community. This parallels the Court’s usual zero-sum approach to belonging also found in migration settings, where the Court insists on exclusive forms of belonging either to the migrant’s home or host country (Costello, The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law). This paper’s analysis of the Court’s approach to belonging aims to contribute to existing debates on citizenship and integration by bringing to the fore the impact legal norms can have on the sense of belonging.