Taking What Law Where and to Whom? Legal Literacy as Transcultural ‘Law-Making’ in Oslo

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how a pluralist legal literacy approach is evolving on the ground, in response to individual women's mixed identities, as Norwegian citizens and members of social and religious communities. To provide legal literacy in a manner that makes law available, accessible and acceptable through linguistically and culturally appropriate, gender-sensitive methods is part and parcel of national law. The chapter describes information about Islam and Pakistani state-law to women in the Norwegian/Pakistani community in Oslo is an integrated part of the action research. It shows a way of taking law to women, embedded in transnational relationships, where a multiplicity of norms and expectations deriving from relatives, religious networks and authorities in Norway and Pakistan are at work. The chapter presents a context-based framework for the analysis of migrant women's access to legal resources. It discusses some case studies which draw attention to the options and limits of the evolving pluralist approach.