Right to Religious Freedom and Right for Family Life: Caught between Integration and Segregation

The domestic impact of EU law, the role of litigation and courts in shaping EU policies, particularly the politics of EU legal, political and social integration has been apparent in several cases ruled by the European court of human rights. One of those cases was about Muslim family refusal to send their daughter to a compulsory mixed swimming lessons in Switzerland where the school did not accept to exempt the daughter from the lesson. In 2017 the court held that there had been no violation of religious freedom right under Article 9 of the European Convention for human rights. The court has considered the best interest of the child as located in social integration, not exclusion, regardless of the child's origin, or the parents' religious or philosophical convictions. This ruling can influence the integration-related EU policies as well as the domestic policies of EU member states in several similar cases concerning free religious schools, gender-based access to public facilities, child marriage, and polygamy in EU member states. The way religiosity can be practised and can contribute to society's function in a secular context is a very understudied and much needed area of research. Our paper aims to investigate the grey area in which the balance between different competing rights has been and is being negotiated in the courts and in daily living in a process of acculturation in a secular country such as Sweden. Authors: Modar Shakra (Uppsala University) and Önver Cetrez (Uppsala University)