Challenging the legitimacy of exclusion: Muslim women and social boundaries in different headscarf policy contexts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Muslim women’s experience of social exclusion is pronounced across Western societies. This study assesses the expectation that legislated headscarf bans reinforce that experience, strengthening social boundaries. Our data source is interviews and focus groups with headscarf-wearing women in three distinct policy contexts: republican-secularist France, multicultural English-Canada, and intercultural Québec. We find that headscarf-based exclusion is pervasive across settings, with widespread reports of mistreatment. Yet, the degree of legitimacy or illegitimacy afforded to such exclusion by mainstream institutions and attitudes significantly affects women’s experience of and engagement in social boundary-drawing across cognitive, emotional, and behavioural levels. In France, the school headscarf ban has mainstream legitimacy and is rarely challenged behaviourally, though effects on cognitive and emotional boundaries are clear. Meanwhile, “spillover” exclusions in domains without formal bans prompt behavioural resistance. In Canada, headscarf restrictions lack legitimacy, especially in English-speaking regions, but exclusion nevertheless occurs, provoking rights-based resistance, including in Québec.