Justice in multicultural society: the Belgian judges and the spouses.

The project's endeavour is to research how specific conjugal issues involving litigants of foreign background, or involved in transnational family lives, which constitute a considerable part of the reality of multicultural family, are addressed in recent Belgian civil case law but also contribute to broad cultural transformations of the place of the couple in society. We will address the importance taken by the evaluation of the consent to marry for civil judges and for the spouses, along with specific questions of equality between spouses included in the evolution of the uses of civil judges of the concept of "public policy" (polygamy, repudiation, exclusion of alimony). The research will be based on recent published case law and interviews to be conducted with civil judges and focus-groups composed of judges (first instance and judges of the peaces). It will be complemented by ethnographical observations of the hearings and interviews to be conducted with spouses involved in civil cases (Civil Code 223 art.; Cicil Code 167 art.; Codip art. 27 §1 al. 4). Therefore this project aims on the one hand to assess the tools used by civil judges to handle multicultural conjugal issues (public policy of IPL code, provisional measures of Civil Code 223 art., revisions of administrative decisions concerning consent to marry) and, on the orther, to reflect on the anthropological transformations undergone by the "couples" when confronted to justice in the Belgian multicultural context. The purpose is to publisch one or even two scientific articles, based on this research.

Keywords:Multicultural family, Legal anthropology, Multicultural justice, Public policy, Consent, Multicultural couples

Disciplines:Anthropology, Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology