Methodology

In order to encourage a discussion on the varieties of legal pluralism, we organised three different focus group discussions, each of 2 hours’ duration. These three group discussions attracted 30 immigrants and Finns. The immigrants were from different religious backgrounds. The first group discussion (Gl) attracted more Finnish women than immigrant men and women. We continued our discussion with 15 participants, 6 of whom were immigrants (1 man + 5 women), and 9 were Finns. The immigrants were from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Palestine. The second group discussion (G2) was organised with four immigrant women from Uzbekistan, Thailand, Nigeria, and Russia, and one male participant from Syria. Immigrants from Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Brazil, Algeria, Greece, Lithuania, and Russia participated in the third discussion group (G3). The third group consisted of four men and six women.

Our goal was to discuss four aspects that overlap between statutory law and diasporic beliefs: (1) religious or diasporic particularism, (2) the informal practice of non-statutory laws, (3) the formalised jurisdiction on diasporic law, and (4) the legal conflicts regime. The formal practice of non-statutory laws is usually invisible. Some practices are visible, but the majority remain highly invisible within Finnish society, and even within their own communities. One of our discussion sessions had well-informed participants; however, two of the discussions were semi-structured, and the respondents were not informed beforehand about the discussion session.

At the beginning of the session, we informed the participants of the thematic content of the discussion. We explicitly operated the discussion in the shadow of Sharia law and in parallel with the statutory laws of Finland. Our goals were to monitor whether our respondents are well informed about the jurisdiction of the statutory laws to enforce the Sharia law, and to make possible a comparison of the fundamental rights of immigrant Muslim minorities with other legal regimes of statutory law and jurisdictions in Finland.

We tried to keep our discussion focused on the equal rights of women and girls in Muslim families and whether those rights are somehow assured by MFL or community law of their country of origin, and we scrutinised how statutory laws have been monitored and controlled in their family life in the host region. The discussion gave us a chance for convergence between statutory law and diasporic community law; also, the discussion supported our study to reveal how the

Pluralism in the family laws of immigrants 99 convergence and execution of Finnish statutory law and MFL shape a debate on legal pluralism. The respondent-led discussion also partly focused on the debate about the support measures if any of the family rights overrides the domestic law of Finland.

Although our discussion covered many other side-effects of social control and regulation undermining the legal practices of statutory law alongside co-ordination of behaviour of some participants of the target group, the respondents’ holistic cultural pluralism was discussed in the group. They agreed that nationwide discussion on cultural pluralism could foster a radical theory of legal pluralism in Finland.

Based on our discussions and the theoretical framework, we have set four hypotheses, as seen in Figure 6.2.

Description

In 2018, Finland took the initiative to ban FGM (Yle, 2018) and place emphasis on the rights of immigrant women. Many members of this focus group still lacked vital information about this related initiative of laws. Moreover, the OECD report (OECD, 2018) also states that immigrant women are at risk of marginalisation in Finnish society, as, generally, their integration path ends with home-care benefits. The integration of immigrant women has remained a subject of discussion.

Our discussion led to four hypotheses.

Figure 6.2 Hypothesised Wilber’s theory in practice