{"id":6646,"date":"2021-02-03T09:30:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T08:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nccr-onthemove.ch\/?p=6646"},"modified":"2025-03-09T20:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T19:30:08","slug":"gendernativism-in-the-illiberal-state-the-burqa-ban-in-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/gendernativism-in-the-illiberal-state-the-burqa-ban-in-switzerland\/","title":{"rendered":"Gendernativism in the (Il)Liberal State: The Burqa Ban in Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 7, the Swiss electorate will vote on the so-called \u2018burqa ban\u2019. This popular initiative as well as the counterproposal stand for what we call gendernativism; the idea that the \u2018native\u2019 Swiss are genuinely gender-equal and that only Swiss women can voluntarily wear the veil. The consequence is not only the silencing and marginalizing of (migrant) Muslim women but their erasure as political subjects of the liberal state, as individual right holders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn enlightened European states like Switzerland, one of the central, inalienable basic values of living together is showing one\u2019s face. [\u2026] Free people \u2013 women and men \u2013 look each other in the face when they talk to each other. No free human being covers their face.\u201d<\/em> (Egerkingen Committee)<\/em><\/p>\n

The face veil, usually referred to as the burqa or the niqab, has been the subject of public attention, legislation and research in many areas of the world. The Swiss electorate is called on to vote on the \u2018burqa ban\u2019 on March 7. While Scholars brought up many well-funded arguments why \u2018burqa bans\u2019 are problematic, one aspect in this debate has not yet been fully considered. Our analysis of the arguments of the pro-ban committee<\/a> and the report of the Federal Council<\/a> shows that the discourse about the \u2018burqa ban\u2019 is best understood as gendernativist. By gendernativism<\/em>, we understand a gendered and racialized form of xenophobia that constructs the \u2018Other\u2019 as the opposite of the free, gender-equal, \u2018real\u2019, \u2018authentic\u2019, \u2018rooted\u2019 citizen (Duyvendak 2012) and mobilizes the idea that \u2018states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (the nation) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening (Mudde 2007, 19). We do not deny that the face veil may entail oppression, just as we do not deny the existence of any form of gendered violence, in Switzerland and elsewhere. Instead, we point to problematic ways in which the issue is framed politically and discursively.<\/p>\n

Nativist Cohesion and Mainstreaming of the Liberation Discourse<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the pro-ban committee, the \u2018Muslim migration wave\u2019 has imported \u2018a backward, archaic understanding of women\u2019 into Europe. The face veil is framed as a problem of migration and depicted as fundamentally opposed to the assumably lived equality of men and women in Switzerland. Covering one\u2019s face is interpreted as a form of submission that signals that Muslim women are unequal to both Muslim men and Swiss women and must be \u2018saved\u2019 (Spivak 1993) from their sexist and illiberal culture and\/or Islam. In opposition, a superior European, liberal, occidental civilization and culture is claimed. This form of boundary work is based on a romanticized imaginary of Swiss gender equality according to which only native Swiss women possess the capacity to be free and gender-equal. This discourse draws upon the idea of a Swiss nation, historically free from immigration and composed \u2013 in nativist terms \u2013 of real, authentic, rooted, and equal citizens. This produces a bright boundary between the Muslim migrantized \u2018Other\u2019 and the native, cohesive Swiss \u2018We\u2019.<\/p>\n

Such nativist and gendered boundary making is no longer exclusive to right-wing actors and nationalist parties. Rather, it has become prevalent across the political landscape and in everyday discourses, for instance in the report of the Federal Council. By adopting a counterproposal to the popular initiative as a \u2018specific response to problems that may result from face coverings\u2019, the Federal Council agrees with the committee that face veils pose a problem. A draft of a counterproposal<\/a> even contained a specific provision that \u2018anyone who forces someone to cover the face by force or threat of serious harm or by other restrictions on the freedom of action shall be punished\u2019 even though any such act was already prohibited by the more general offense of coercion (art. 181 Swiss Criminal Code). This provision was dropped, and the Federal Council clearly opposes the popular initiative. Still, the counterproposal perpetuates gendernativism by reproducing the image of the oppressed woman \u2013 as well as the male perpetrator, respectively \u2013 as the standard assumption regarding Muslim women.<\/p>\n

Negation of the Liberal Subject Status<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the pro-ban committee, veiled women cannot be free and equal citizens, and thus, part of the Swiss nation, as citizens show their face in public (note that, apart from its bluntness, the argument seems quite out of place in times of COVID-19). By referring to veiling one\u2019s face as only \u2018allegedly\u2019 voluntary, the committee bypasses the argument that the ban constitutes an infringement on individual rights because an involuntary act cannot be considered to be an exercise of an individual right.<\/p>\n

The Federal Council does not adopt this argument. Yet, while its report considers the ban an infringement on personal rights and accepts that wearing a face veil can be voluntary, it does so along nativist lines. The only sentence referring to autonomy and voluntarism in the entire report explicitly refers to Swiss converts. It highlights the nativist boundary between the free Swiss convert who may indeed wear a veil voluntarily and the migrant Muslim woman who is incapable of such voluntarism. This nativist boundary drawing was reinforced by the public figure of Nora Illi, a controversial Swiss convert who died in March 2020. She regularly appeared on television in a face veil and stated that it gave her \u2018a feeling of freedom\u2019<\/a>. In her case, the face veil was never interpreted as a symbol of oppression, and her claim that it allowed her to feel free was never questioned \u2013 instead, it was denounced as an act of provocation.<\/p>\n

In other terms, fundamental freedoms of migrant Muslim women \u2013 to dress freely \u2013 are not merely restricted but not even conceded in the first place. Because these women are assumed to be oppressed and lacking in autonomy, they are excluded from the very subject status that is supposedly at the core of the liberal state. This leads to the discursive negation of the veiled migrant woman as a subject of liberal democracy with individual rights and liberties. Her veiling the face is never considered an expression of liberty, nor its banning an infringement on this liberty. As autonomy is a necessary condition for political subjecthood, denying autonomy to veiled migrant women violates a fundamental premise of liberal democracy (Galeotti 2015).<\/p>\n

Towards Recognition of Political Subjecthood<\/strong><\/p>\n

We propose to reject the racialized, culturalized and migranticized lenses through which phenomena like the face veil are all too often examined (Dahinden 2016). This would demand a reflexive and more inclusive stance regarding the (European) model of liberal society (Shachar 2007; Gianni 2019), asking the following questions. To whom do supposedly liberal states like Switzerland concede full subject status, including the autonomy to make decisions that might not seem \u2018normal\u2019? Who is given a voice in interpreting topics, and how can anti-racist feminism \u2013 that takes the issue of equal political subjecthood seriously \u2013 be promoted? An important characteristic of such a revised intersectional and liberal perspective includes the recognition of migrant and Muslim women, as political subjects and equal citizens.<\/p>\n

This blog is based on an upcoming article: <\/em>Dahinden, Janine, and Manser-Egli, Stefan. forthcoming. “Gendernativism and the (Il)Liberal State: The Cases of Forced Marriage and the Burqa Ban in Switzerland”.<\/em><\/p>\n

Janine Dahinden<\/a> is a professor of Transnational Studies at the \u2018Maison d\u2019analyse des processus sociaux\u2019 (MAPS) of the University of Neuch\u00e2tel and a Project Leader of the nccr \u2013 on the move. Stefan Manser-Egli<\/a> is a doctoral researcher at the nccr \u2013 on the move and at the MAPS, University of Neuch\u00e2tel.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can find an extended German translation of this blog contribution on the Gender Campus blog website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

\u2013 Dahinden, Janine (2016). A Plea for the \u2018De-Migranticization’ of Research on Migration and Integration<\/a>, Ethnic and Racial Studies<\/em> 39(13),\u00a0 2207\u20132225.
\n\u2013 Duyvendak, Jan Willem (2012). Holland as a Home. Racism and\/or Nativism?<\/a> Krisis (2).
\n\u2013 Galeotti, Anna Elisabetta (2015). Autonomy and Cultural Practices: The Risk of Double Standards<\/a>. European Journal of Political Theory<\/em> 14(3), 277\u2013296.
\n\u2013 Gianni, Matteo (2019). Injonction \u00e0 l’int\u00e9gration et citoyennet\u00e9 pour les musulmans en Suisse. Une relation paradoxale. In: L’islam (in)visible en ville<\/em>, 83\u2013103. Gen\u00e8ve: Labor et Fides.
\n\u2013 Mudde, Cas (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
\n\u2013 Shachar, Ayelet (2007). Feminism and Multiculturalism: Mapping the Terrain. In: Multiculturalism and Political Theory<\/em>, edited by Anthony Simon Laden and David Owen, 115\u2013147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
\n\u2013 Spivak, Gayatri (1993). Can the Subaltern Speak? In: Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader<\/em>, edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, 66\u2013111. New York and Sydney: Harvester Wheatsheaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 7, the Swiss electorate will vote on the so-called \u2018burqa ban\u2019. This popular initiative as well as the counterproposal stand for what we call gendernativism; the idea that the \u2018native\u2019 Swiss are genuinely gender-equal and that only Swiss women can voluntarily wear the veil. The consequence is not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[215,220,223,225,230,888,234,436],"coauthors":[400,631],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-discriminations","tag-exclusion","tag-gender","tag-human-rights","tag-minorities","tag-religion","tag-switzerland","tag-votes"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6680,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions\/6680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}