Difference and Laïcité: France's Headscarf Debates and the Banning of Religious Symbols in French Public Schools

Abstract

The prolific debate and discussion about headscarves serves to direct our attention to particular aspects of French society at the times of the headscarf affairs in 1989, 1993-4 and 2003-4. Through analyzing these debates and discussions of headscarves and the social situation of North African migrants and French Muslims, as well as the surrounding context of French laïcité, multiculturalism, Europeanization and globalization, we see that the headscarf serves as a useful tool and medium for the maintenance and expression of power and social boundaries. Banning the headscarf became a way to direct symbolic and structural violence against France's minorities in order to create and solidify French national identity in an environment of uncertainty. My thesis explores Hanson's distinction between contradictory and compartmental difference. The headscarf affairs were instances of contradictory difference that arose out of a context of compartmental differences. They also served to define, mark and reinforce the boundaries of different parts of French society in a continuing situation of compartmental difference. Arjun Appadurai's notions about the use of physical violence to create certainty in an uncertain world, and Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence clarify the relationship between contradictory and compartmental difference.