The Management of Diversity: Prohibitionist Parcours in Muslim Clothing in Europe

Abstract

In this article, the authors analyse the trajectories of the increasingly restrictive regulations regarding the Muslim female population and their embodiment in public spaces, especially in educational and work establishments. These laws and norms have two fundamental characteristics. The first is that they are firmly inserted in local contexts, in which they play different roles, sometimes related to mere partisan or electioneering conjunctures; the second is that their scope goes far beyond the prohibition of clothing, since they are linked to the construction of representations and citizenship. Both circumstances are integrated in a systematic construction of racism, as a constitutive part of the capitalist moment, which incorporates other levels, apparently in a contradictory way, but with a great coherence in the prohibitionist objective.