Anna C. Korteweg and Gokce Yurdakul's "The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Outsiders Within: Framing and Regulation of Headscarves in France, Germany and The Netherlands
Social Inclusion, 2014
While women in Europe who wear the Islamic headscarf are generally seen as outsiders who do not belong to the nation, some countries are more tolerant towards the wearing of headscarves than others. France, Germany and the Netherlands have developed different policies regarding veiling. In this paper we describe how headscarves became regulated in each of these countries and discuss the ways in which French, Dutch and German politicians have deliberated the issue. The paper is based on a content analysis of parliamentary debates on veiling in France (1989France ( -2007, Germany (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) and the Netherlands (1985Netherlands ( -2007. Our aim is to discuss what these national political debates reveal about the way in which the social inclusion of Islamic women in (or rather exclusion from) the nation is perceived in these three countries. Our claim is that veiling arouses opposition because it challenges national self-understandings. Yet, because nations have different histories of nation building, these self-understandings are challenged in various ways and hence, governments have responded to headscarves with diverse regulation. While we did find national differences, we also discovered that the political debates in the three countries are converging over time. The trend is towards increasingly gendered debates and more restrictive headscarf policies. This, we hypothesize, is explained by international polarization around Islam and the strength of the populist anti-immigrant parties across Europe.
Article Outsiders Within: Framing and Regulation of Headscarves in France
2016
While women in Europe who wear the Islamic headscarf are generally seen as outsiders who do not belong to the na-tion, some countries are more tolerant towards the wearing of headscarves than others. France, Germany and the Netherlands have developed different policies regarding veiling. In this paper we describe how headscarves became regulated in each of these countries and discuss the ways in which French, Dutch and German politicians have deliber-ated the issue. The paper is based on a content analysis of parliamentary debates on veiling in France (1989–2007), Germany (1997–2007) and the Netherlands (1985–2007). Our aim is to discuss what these national political debates re-veal about the way in which the social inclusion of Islamic women in (or rather exclusion from) the nation is perceived in these three countries. Our claim is that veiling arouses opposition because it challenges national self-understandings. Yet, because nations have different histories of nation building, t...
Headscarf regimes in Europe: Diversity policies at the intersection of gender, culture and religion
2014
The headscarf issue became an arena of heated controversies over the politics of integration and religious and cultural differences since the mid-1980s. Most interestingly, these struggles are deeply connected to gender differences. Although all European countries are consolidated, liberal democracies, different institutional settings have translated into different approaches of headscarf policies. The main aim of this paper is first to explain differences and similarities in regulating the headscarf issue by analyzing three paradigmatic countries: Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. By selecting these countries, the paper aims, secondly, to contribute to a refined methodology explaining the different types of headscarf regulation. The third aim is to detect the gendered narrative of the policy debates. The comparison shows that an ethno-cultural citizenship regime does not always lead to a prohibitive regulation (Austria) and cooperative state–church relations do not always resul...
Headscarves: A Comparison of Public Thought and Public Policy in Germany and the Netherlands
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2007
This article focuses on public debates and public policy on the Islamic headscarf in the Netherlands and Germany. The framing and regulating of the headscarf does differ between the two countries. In the Netherlands the Islamic headscarf meets with an accommodating policy reaction, while in Germany some ten federal states are preparing legislation to ban the headscarf. This difference is explained, so I argue, by national differences in citizenship traditions. While Germany used to be the paradigmatic example of an ethno-cultural model of citizenship, the Netherlands is considered as representing a multicultural model. A remarkable similarity between the two countries is that the debate on the headscarf is strictly national and de-gendered in focus. It is about public neutrality and religious freedom, not about gender equality. In effect the complex reality of Islamic women's lives remains unadressed as well as the question of their autonomy.
The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging
2014
odd that the author has chosen to speak of the Irish Americans as having embraced respectability in order to prove their 'racial fitness' and to distance themselves from the African Americans. The case that the Irish in nineteenth-century America were seen predominantly in racial terms rather than in terms of class or religion is based on shaky evidence, largely gathered by the dredging up of a few by now familiar caricatures and quotations that get copied from one writer of self-serving history to another. Duffy uses a very strained definition of race: 'Though they [the Irish] had the skin color necessary for naturalization, they were lacking in other racial standards, namely class and religion'(9). Blurring the concept of race in this way does not advance our understanding and it denies the independent importance of both class and religion. In context, it seems to be a way of dealing with the hostile comments of her informants, including the new arrivals from Ireland, about the local African Americans, whom they refer to as lazy, disorderly people living off welfare. Even here the link is uncertain, since the same informants describe the local West Indian and Mexican immigrants, whom they nonetheless regard as racially distant, as hard-working. If I were an African American feeling threatened by and seeking to challenge the Irish claim of having overcome intense discrimination through industry and virtue alone, I would be inclined to cite historical evidence that the Irish often rose up the ethnic hierarchy through their corrupt control of municipal government. Jobs were reserved for members of their own group and competing Italian, German, Jewish and African American applicants were kept out. Local government was affirmative action for the Irish, as indeed was the Roman Catholic Church. A decent Polish priest would have stood little chance of becoming a bishop in an Irish-dominated hierarchy, which indeed led to a schism with many Poles leaving the Church. The author's grasp of economics, which can be summed up as 'neo-liberalism is bad', and of the reasons why Irish people tend to have more problems with alcohol than individuals of other nations, which she sees as a 'postcolonial' phenomenon or as an act of defiance, is somewhat lacking in sophistication. It reads as if the author had been told that her perfectly good descriptive account was 'under-theorized' and needed to be pushed through untestable, value-laden grids. All too often it reads like a political tract. There is no reason why people should not write political tracts, but is it really the business of a respected university press to publish them?
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 2012
This paper evaluates the explanatory capacity of 'national models' of migrant integration, through a comparative analysis of the regulation of Islamic headscarves on the one hand and civic integration abroad policies on the other hand in France and the Netherlands. It argues that 'national models', defined as historically rooted conceptions of nationhood, polity and belonging, matter because they enable and constrain the framing of policy problems. However, the impact of 'national models' on the policy outcome is determined by the political and institutional context in which decision making takes place.
“Is the headscarf oppressive or emancipatory?” Field notes from the ‘multicultural debates’. (2012)
'Religion and Gender', 2(1), 36-56., 2012
This essay examines the discursive contours of the multicultural debate in Europe, and the ways in which it is cast in gendered terms. It does so by investigating one particular albeit highly contentious issue, notably the headscarf controversy. In recent years, this sartorial practice has turned into an important object of debate and controversy in various Western European countries, often structured around the question 'is the headscarf oppressive or emancipatory?'. Rather than engaging substantially with this question, or with the various meanings or significations of hijab as a sartorial practice, we seek to reflect upon the performative effects of this question, and do so more specifically in the Belgian context. What kind of imaginaries does the headscarf debate in general, and this question in particular, limit or shape? And what kinds of speeches and actions does it enable or conceal? We argue that the headscarf debate is functional to the constitution of a specific idea of 'neutrality' on the one hand, and of an 'emancipated gender identity' (agency) on the other, which is primarily grasped in liberal and secular terms (through the language of 'rights'). More than simply tracing the performative effects of this discussion, we also try to account for the possibilities of overcoming these discursive conditionalities and the capacity of rendering other forms of agency intelligible. . Her work engages with questions of modernity, religion and secularism, with particular attention to issues of subjectivity, agency and gender.
Religion and Gender, 2011
This essay examines the discursive contours of the multicultural debate in Europe, and the ways in which it is cast in gendered terms. It does so by investigating one particular albeit highly contentious issue, notably the headscarf controversy. In recent years, this sartorial practice has turned into an important object of debate and controversy in various Western European countries, often structured around the question 'is the headscarf oppressive or emancipatory?'. Rather than engaging substantially with this question, or with the various meanings or significations of hijab as a sartorial practice, we seek to reflect upon the performative effects of this question, and do so more specifically in the Belgian context. What kind of imaginaries does the headscarf debate in general, and this question in particular, limit or shape? And what kinds of speeches and actions does it enable or conceal? We argue that the headscarf debate is functional to the constitution of a specific idea of 'neutrality' on the one hand, and of an 'emancipated gender identity' (agency) on the other, which is primarily grasped in liberal and secular terms (through the language of 'rights'). More than simply tracing the performative effects of this discussion, we also try to account for the possibilities of overcoming these discursive conditionalities and the capacity of rendering other forms of agency intelligible.