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theses

Cultural Muslim women in Europe continue to feature prominently in public debates on immigration, assimilation and changing societies. France in particular has gained international attention for its public discourses and resulting legal measures that target Muslim women. The 2004 law prohibiting girls from wearing a hijab in public schools stands out as one example of how Muslim women are used to symbolize what is not acceptable in French society. Geographers have used various approaches to question how and why Muslim women are treated as an exception. In this dissertation, I build upon their work by developing the concept of cultural insecurity as a departure point to analyze how Muslim women are engaging with and contesting representations that characterize them as a threat to Frenchness. Cultural insecurity is first defined as the fear of losing unifying cultural traits due to the presence of another cultural group that is depicted as threatening due to its difference and perceived inability to adapt to other cultures. I argue that a large group of non-Muslim French public actors use discourses of cultural insecurity to generate discussions and debates on how the presence of Muslim women endangers French culture. Muslim women are the focus because of the highly visible nature of veiling practices, magnified by the nature of gender relations and feminism in France. These women are represented as submissive, provoking agents, radicalized and too religious for comfort. The production of cultural insecurity relies upon the circulation of narratives that represent Muslim women as having a single threatening identity, and this emphasis on threat results in mistreatment and discrimination of Muslim women. To understand how Muslim women engage with and contest these negative representations, I coded and analyzed data from two sites: the neighborhoods of the Parisian suburb Boulogne-Billancourt and the website Oumma.com. Through observations of the neighborhood landscapes, I found evidence not only of cultural insecurities through signs and symbols but also of a dialogue between defenders of Muslims and those participating in cultural insecurity discourses. Material, offline spaces allow Muslim women to produce counter narratives that are positive through performance art, casual interactions as well as social and civic engagement. Women reported experiencing discrimination and holding insecurities of their own which are byproducts of cultural insecurities felt by non-Muslim French. The analysis of the data collected on Oumma.com reveals that online spaces provide opportunities and support the engagement and contestation of circulating narratives in ways that would otherwise not be possible in material, offline spaces. Websites and social media allow Muslim women to cross geographical barriers, facilitating the forming of social bonds, connections and the sharing of information. This act of sharing is particularly important in the context of potential discrimination, verbal abuse and physical assault linked to Islamophobia. Women are able to not only support one another, but to also provide resources from relevant legal and social organizations to bring attention to how cultural insecurities are adversely affecting Muslim women. The results from the analysis of these two sites show that cultural insecurity is not only a useful lens through which geographers can analyze socio-economic phenomenon, but also the importance of conducting research in both material, offline and online spaces

ETD_8662

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Kathleen D. Woodhouse-Ledermann

doi:10.7282/T3891934

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.