Migrants’ Freedom of Religion under the European Convention on Human Rights: The Case of the Disposal of Religious Symbols

Nowadays, issues related to the protection of religious freedom are undoubtedly linked to the increasingly evident tensions between different components of modern multicultural societies – which is also emphasized by the steady increment of so-called “people with a migrant background”. In this context, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to manifest one’s religion, enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, appears to suffer from a bias against people belonging to religious minorities. The present paper analyses the Court’s case law on the disposal of religious symbols by distinguishing two models of judicial reasoning and outcome, notably the “expansive model” and the “assimilation model”.