Perceptions of procedural justice in cases of perceived discrimination

This dissertation examines the role of perceived procedural justice in cases of perceived religious discrimination of Muslim women in Flanders. Perceived procedural justice refers to perceptions or judgments about the fairness of procedures used to make decisions. In social psychology, various desirable effects on people’s subsequent reactions have been linked to presence of such perceptions. First, the similarities between the discussions of fair procedures in law and in social psychology are uncovered. Debates in perceived procedural justice research and in legal theory on the value of fair procedure are compared and what constitutes a fair procedure is examined, in research on perceived procedural justice and doctrinal research on the civil limb of Article 6 ECHR. Second, in the empirical part of the thesis, the focus lies on to the narratives of the women who encounter discrimination in their daily lives. The various discriminatory experiences Muslim women in Belgium are subjected to are discovered, as well as to what extent fair process effects occur in such cases and how these women evaluate their treatment when they report their experience to the Belgian National Equality Body (Unia)