The burkini in German legal discourse: individualised integration, belonging, and the role of the state

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the German legal system ruled on a case about coeducational public-school swimming lessons and burkini-wearing from the court of first jurisdiction through the country’s supreme court. It asks: How do the judiciary’s decisions construct, maintain, or reproduce the notion of what it means to belong in Germany and, by extension, how is integration marked through individual participation in activities that are defined as culturally significant? Scholarship on the burkini is limited compared to other forms of Islamic dress. The article helps to rectify this imbalance by indicating how legal discourse about the burkini marks group boundaries and manages difference within society. The analysis suggests that the concept of integration is applied to individual bodily practices in educational contexts and burkini-wearing, in particular, as a way of validating a gendered form of sociopolitical belonging with the burkini framed as a compromise. The findings show how a garment designed to meet the needs of Muslim women is recontextualised by the courts as a physical expression of German liberalism and tolerance even as the guidelines for when and how it is worn remain at the direction of the state and thus, limit individual agency.