Competing Rights and Social Control: A Comparison of Polygamy’s Regulation in Canada and France: a public lecture by Melanie Heath (McMaster University)

Competing Rights and Social Control: A Comparison of Polygamy’s Regulation in Canada and France

Melanie Heath

Associate Professor of Sociology

McMaster University

Competing human rights involve circumstances in which the beliefs or practices of an individual or group’s human rights and freedoms, as protected by law, interfere with another’s rights and freedoms. In 2010, the Canadian Supreme Court of British Columbia embarked on an unprecedented reference case to test whether Canada’s prohibition against polygamy presents a competing rights case. It asked whether criminalizing polygamy, which predominantly affects fundamentalist Mormons living in British Columbia, is consistent with the freedoms guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the bill of rights in the Constitution Act, 1982.In 2011, the court ruled that, although the law violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, the potential harm caused by polygamy to women, children, andmonogamy outweighs this concern. In contrast to Canada’s treatment as a competing rights issue, France has dealt with polygamy in terms of social control.The context for regulating polygamy in France differs due to the demographics of the polygamous populations, predominantlyimmigrants from Gambia, Mali, Mauritania,and Senegal. In 1993, it passed the LoiPasqua, which altered the immigration law so that only one spouse per immigrant would be issued a visa. The law has had negative consequences for polygamous families, as it requires multiple spouses todivorce and physically separate their households or face deportation. While the context and policies for regulating polygamy in Canada and France differ, the outcomes offer some striking similarities. This talk compares these legal and national frameworks to consider the ways each act as asiteofsocialcontrol.

Melanie Heath is an associate professor in the Department Sociology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Her research addresses the consequences of family, gender, and sexual politics on social inequality. She is author of One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America (New York University Press, 2012). She has published in Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Contexts, and a forthcoming article in The Sociological Quarterly. Her current research, funded by a Canadian SSHRC Insight Grant, examines the regulation of polygamy in four countries: France, Canada, the United States, and Bénin.