Theoretical framework

Interrelationships between immigrant people and a social ecological system appear as a general, neutral, and essential means for maintaining effective integration. Immigrants can control their integration process according to their rights and characterise their territorial existence based on their essential needs. Both of these factors can directly or indirectly (Yeasmin, 2018) affect the path of their integration into a new society (ibid.). The practice of their own cultural rights along with family rights are important to understanding immigrants’ identities in the host country. However, maintaining the host socio-ecological system demands a capacity for transformability in a new domain, which emphasises adaptive resource management (Walker et al., 2004). Integrating new legal concepts and components can cause detrimental clashes in a new domain. Some legal scholars also see the issues as belonging to the group rights of immigrants, rather than an individual’s rights. When dealing with Muslim immigrants and their right to assert their religious and family freedoms, it is indeed a particular case of a religious group rather than individuals (Sense about Sharia, 2010). Such rights include: (1) the right to identity and special measures for the preservation of this right; (2) the right of religious freedom to practise one’s own religion; (3) the right to social communication with similar religious minorities within or outside the country; 4) the rights to freedom of autonomy (Volkov, 2000; Swenson, 2018) to enjoy family life, which includes child custody, patrimony, marriage contracts, and so on.

On the contrary, immigrant minorities are obliged to follow the legal systems of the host country, which can contradict the above-mentioned rights to a large extent. In these circumstances, non-state legal systems exist simply as a subordinate legal system of the state legal system in the host country (Lerner, 2011a, 2011b).

In Finland, the criticism of legal pluralism, which is incited by multiculturalism, is not particularly stronger than it is in the Netherlands or in the United Kingdom. However, Finnish immigration and integration policies have a spillover effect on the Finnish legislative system such as social policies, human rights, cultural rights, and family rights. Integration policies have a legal political domain along with the socio-economic and cultural domains, which also include the religious domain (Penninx, 2004). The policies create an integral plurality towards integration -“porous legality” (Griffiths, 1986) - for state, and “legal porosity” (ibid.) for Muslim immigrants. They face diasporic legal cultures and a legal system of differences (Shah, 2005) and are compelled to act against the legal system of the host state when it contradicts their own diasporic legal system (Shah, 2005).

A successful integration process needs: ( 1 ) the willingness of the state or society to provide the appropriate opportunities for immigrants to integrate and (2) the commitment of immigrants towards the host society (Weiner, 1996). State policies are willing to implant immigrants but without legal transplantation. In contrast, Muslim immigrants are also willing to integrate into the host society, without, however, leaving their diasporic identity in general.

The banning of halal slaughtering and FGM have been the main topics of discussion on the secular absolutistic model, which has been seen as a monopoly of law-making among some immigrant religious groups in Finland (Yeasmin, 2014). Legal pluralism has become a major theme in Finnish socio-legal studies after the banning and denying the religious and family rights of some groups of Muslim immigrants. Practising non-statutory laws can create a gap between legal practice and textual legal provision (Vanderlinden, 1989), because the positive manifestation of the conformity of textual law and raising alternative legal ordering can increase the legitimacy of the state law. The convergence of the classic themes of MFL and cultural rights is challenging and cannot stop the practice of these bodies of law by legal ordering to some extent, which sadly has the effect of making laws and orders inefficient (Roberts, 1979). Clarifying the features of the case of legal pluralism among the target groups practising different legal systems is effective (Woodman, 1998). Encompassing any law into an existing system in order to establish normative orders and human experiences needs interpretation of concepts, exercises, and continuous legal education for porosity (Santos, 1989, 1995; Guevara-Gill & Thome, 1992).

In order to provide an inclusive framework for legal pluralism, we need to separate a meta-paradigm that can support the understanding of the topographies of the plurality of laws and legal practices available in Finland. Wilber’s integral theory allows us, here in this study, to systematically explore and develop multiple aspects of legal pluralism. This integral theory relates more of the reality of the need to practise the combined laws and orders together with the phenomenological aspects of individual values in addition to a certain cognitive awareness under

Pluralism in the family laws of immigrants 97 various organisational systems and behaviour. Likewise, Muslim immigrants find that the Finnish liberal constitutional democracies lack a certain legal accommodation of their family law and cultural rights.

In this theory, the interior quadrant(s) focus on the reality of the informal practices of the cultural and family rights of Muslim immigrants - individually and collectively; in contrast, the exterior quadrant(s) highlight the statutory laws and institutionalised practices of Finnish law that ban all types of ritualism and ethno-communal practices such as FGM and the dignity or honour of men in the family. This gives us a useful understanding of the complexity of the reality in a way that addresses problems that can be digested in a more skilful way (Esbjôrn-Hargens & Zimmerman, 2009; Esbjôrn-Hargens, 2018). This assessment also incorporates the essential tracks that are in need of attention.

The integral theory (see Figure 6.1), with its eight methodological zones, is named methodological pluralism and includes the phenomenological approach of subjective realities in the first quadrant, and the ethnomethodological approach, which indicates collective or intersubjective realities on diasporic laws and rights. Quadrant IT is an exploration of the empirical realities of the host state that represent and introduce the most systematic approach for Muslim immigrants by ensuring that they are bound to follow the tried and factual methods of law on FGM, human rights, and other western rights that have been respected by all Muslim immigrants living in Finland.

Figure 6.1 Combining Wilber’s integral theory in practice with subject matter

Source: Wilber’s integral theory (Wilber, 1996)

This methodological pluralism has three pillars: (1) inclusion - consulting multiple laws and orders, (2) enfoldment - prioritising the importance of laws and orders, and (3) enactment - recognising or believing that the laws and orders are created after consultation with the target groups, and that these laws and orders are known to everybody. This methodological pluralism includes major and valid insights into understanding the concept of legal pluralism in a comprehensive way. This model gives us an effective response to the complexity of reality on normative legal pluralism.