Muslins in EuropeFrench Headscarf Ban Adversely Affects Muslim Girls

Published 1 September 2020

New research has shown that the French ban prohibiting Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools has had a detrimental effect on both the girls’ ability to complete their secondary education and their trajectories in the labor market. “In response to rising immigration flows and the fear of Islamic radicalization, several Western countries have enacted policies to restrict religious expression and emphasize secularism and Western values,” the co-authors write. “Despite intense public debate, there is little systematic evidence on how such policies influence the behavior of the religious minorities they target,” said one researcher.

New research has shown that the French ban prohibiting Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools has had a detrimental effect on both the girls’ ability to complete their secondary education and their trajectories in the labor market.

In a paper published last month in the American Political Science ReviewVasiliki Fouka, assistant professor of political science in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, and Aala Abdelgadir, a doctoral candidate in political science, found that the 2004 ban led to increased perceptions of discrimination, which hindered Muslim girls from finishing school.

The scholars also found that the ban strengthened both national and religious identities for young Muslim women who were most affected by it. This nuanced picture could be seen to be at odds with the intended goal of the ban, which was to reduce the visibility of religion in the public sphere in accordance with French values.

“I think we have, from different contexts, quite a bit of evidence that these types of prescriptive policies are likely to backfire,” Fouka said. The scholars write that one way of interpreting their findings—based on insights from interviews they conducted—is that native-born children of immigrants are redefining what it means to be a citizen of a Western country. Many are asserting that existing notions of national identification should be broadened to make room for expressions of cultural and religious differences.

Using Evidence to Determine Effects
“In response to rising immigration flows and the fear of Islamic radicalization, several Western countries have enacted policies to restrict religious expression and emphasize secularism and Western values,” the co-authors write. “Despite intense public debate, there is little systematic evidence on how such policies influence the behavior of the religious minorities they target.”

In order to provide that systemic evidence on the effect of the French ban, Fouka and Abdelgadir used data from the French Labor Force Survey, the French census, and a representative survey of immigrants and immigrant-descendants. These sources were used to compare differences between Muslim and non-Muslim women who were born earlier than 1986, and had likely left secondary education by the time the ban was enacted and those born in 1986 or later, who were affected by the ban. The latter group was young enough to be at school when the law was enacted in 2004 and then could be followed for many years after the ban went into effect.