Challenging the legitimacy of exclusion: Muslim women and social boundaries in different headscarf policy contexts
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2022.2089535?journalCode=rers20
With Dr. Emily Laxer and Dr. Jeffrey Reitz, we comparatively explore how Muslim women in France, Quebec and English Canada experience social exclusion, and challenge such exclusion based on the perceived legitimacy of headscarf-based policy regulations. We find that in France, the school headscarf ban holds mainstream legitimacy and is therefore rarely challenged behaviourally, though participants express emotional strain due to this policy. In Canada, the legitimacy afforded to multicultural policy and human-rights legislation enables participants to contest headscarf-based social exclusion. At the time of study in Quebec, where no legislation existed that regulated minority religious practices, participants also used human-rights justifications to challenge discrimination and exclusion. Although, with the implementation of the Quebec law Bill 21 in June 2019 that restricts the wearing of religious symbols for public sector employees, further research is needed.
