ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

estricted to women, children and families only, and
that it intended to rely on private sponsorship efforts
to make it happen. The author first presents Canadian
policies on refugee selection from abroad, and then
conducts a case study of the Syrian refugees selection
process and of the use of private sponsorship
by Canadians. The Canadian resettlement effort appears
to be a success so far, and especially the private
sponsorship program, a rather unique creation on
the international scene. The author then engages in
a brief comparative analysis of other selection processes
of fellow Western countries accepting Syrian
refugees since fall 2015. The ultimate goal of this paper
is to find which system of resettlement appears to
be the most successful at targeting genuine refugees
and helping facilitate integration upon arrival.
Tamar Megiddo: Pushing at the Border: Individuals,
International Law and Israel’s Refugee
Admittance Policy
Many states’ immigration policies are under significant
strain from a global refugee crisis. Actors seize the
opportunity to mobilize to influence new state policies.
International law serves as the language in which the
debate is cast and with which national policy is deliberated
and negotiated. This paper presents original
empirical research into Israel’s 2007 “hot return” policy
whereby individuals who crossed Israel’s Egyptian border
were promptly returned to Egypt. This now forsaken
policy sparked public engagement around Israel’s
appropriate treatment of the migrants and asylum
seekers. The participants in the Israeli policymaking
process included not only Israeli state officials, but also
a multitude of non-officials and non-Israelis: asylum
seekers, soldiers and officers, military and government
legal advisors, activist lawyers and UN officials. International
law served as a common language through
which the issue was framed, analyzed and debated.
Tiago Monteiro: Refugees in Brazil: crossing
frontiers and territories in the olympic city
The number of refugees arriving in Brazil has been
increasing over the years, and many more applicants
are expected meanwhile the 2016 Olympic games. It is
proposed to think Law as guardian of the will and needs
of people to move and relocate, but in a broad and inclusive
way, overcoming borders of pen and paper. The migrant
adaptation process depends on variables of origin
and outcome. Migrating is rupture with territory and with
a community, and social, moral and cultural orders. To
the migrant, who already shares the same social spaces
with the citizen, the abstention of the State in promoting
serious local inclusion policies sponsors uncontrolled
reconstruction of territories – seen as processes. And if
those people are not included in the minimum development
standards and in the values of the dominant society,
these territories may present fertile to growth and
stabilization of disorder, as well as to the non-realization
and promotion of self-esteem and (re)creation of identity.
68 WOMEN AND RELIGION – BEYOND
THE HEADSCARF CONTROVERSY
This panel examines and challenges existing models
for solving the tension between religious freedom and
women’s rights, both from theoretical perspectives and
with regard to specific test cases arising in different
countries.
Participants Gila Stopler
Tamar Hostovsky Brandes
Meital Pinto
Anne Köhler
Tehila Sagy
Name of Chair Yofi Tirosh
Room BE2 144
Gila Stopler: Religion, State Relations and
their effects on Women’s Rights: Privatization,
Nationalization and Authorization
The increased importance of religion in the lives of
many, together with the de-privatization of religion have
given rise to the strengthening of the status and role
of religion in the public and governmental spheres, as
well as the strengthening of the power and authority
of private religious communities over their members.
Both these phenomena stand in tension with the classic
liberal understanding of religion-state relations and
with liberal perceptions of human rights, and create the
need to protect the rights of vulnerable women. This
presentation will offer a new typology of religion-state
relations – the nationalization of religion, the authorization
of religion and the privatization of religion – that
can facilitate our understanding of the effects of the
strengthening role of religion on the rights of women. It
will then use this typology to discuss two cases – the NY
Get Laws, and the enforcement of decisions of private
Sharia tribunals as arbitration decisions.
Tamar Hostovsky Brandes: Equality for Whom?
Reconciling the Rights of Religious Women with
Public Interest
This paper argues that, after two and a half decades
of legal and political debates on the question of gender
equality and religious freedom, we have failed to
develop legal models that ensure substantive equality
for religious women. This failure can be attributed, in
part, to the application of a general concept of quality,
which assumed that certain practices are either compatible
with equality or incompatible with it. This paper
challenges this assumption, arguing that practices that
appear to violate the general principle of equality may
nonetheless promote equality for some, in specific contexts.
When examining the compatibility of certain practices
with the principle of equality, we thus should first
ask whose rights are at stake, and then examine what
equality for each of the different parties involved would
look like. As opposed to models that are based on bal-
Concurring panels 107