Abstract
More than ever, ‘the headscarf’ is a dominant trope in contemporary ‘Western’ discourses on migration. Within controversies on Muslim ‘others’, ethnicity and gender frequently interweave. In discussions about the Muslim woman, a problematic dichotomy frequently emerges: namely the representation of a Muslim woman who wears the headscarf and is seen as ‘oppressed’ or ‘traditional’. This is opposed to the position of a Muslim woman who does not wear the headscarf and is simultaneously considered a ‘self-determined’ or ‘modern’ Muslim woman. Against this backdrop, this contribution adopts a critical perspective on dichotomising discourses on Muslim women’s practices in relation to wearing the headscarf. In this article the authors examine narrative interviews with four Muslim women, focusing on their subjective experiences and psychological coping strategies with dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes. An in-depth qualitative analysis shows that these women display a need to constantly justify and negotiate their own positions in relation to wearing the headscarf, regardless of whether the interviewed women actually wear a headscarf or not. Based on this, the authors identify different psychological coping strategies and discuss them critically in a wider framework that draws attention to existing social hierarchies.
Introduction
The increasing migration movements since the often cited ‘refugee crisis’ culminating in summer 2015 are currently once more attracting anti-Muslim political rhetoric within right-wing policies across many countries in Europe (for a political analysis see contributions in Barlai et al., 2017). From 2017 until spring 2019, the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) officially found entrance into the Austrian federal government as a coalition partner of the governing party ‘Austrian New People’s Party’ (ÖVP). The FPÖ’s election success was vitally due to stirring up anti-Muslim resentment in their election campaign, making migration and internal security main issues (see for instance Buzogány and Scherhaufer, 2018). As a result, a key player in anti-Muslim feelings in Austria gained substantial government power. On the other hand, this election also led to the exclusion of the liberal Austrian Greens (Buzogány and Scherhaufer, 2018). One political-scientific explanation is found in the fact that they ‘maintained’ their ‘migrant- and refugee-friendly positions’ (Buzogány and Scherhaufer, 2018: 3). Although the Austrian federal government changed after the recent elections in 2019, right-wing parties and anti-migrant politics – building ‘upon Islamophobic mobilization’ (Hafez, 2019: 197) – remained on the increase. Against this backdrop of rising anti-Muslim positions in Europe – and especially in Austria – this article focuses on self-presentations of Muslim women in Vienna. By analysing their daily experiences of living in Vienna, we firstly aim to shed light on their subjective experiences with dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes. Secondly, and importantly, we reconstruct their coping strategies 1 in regard to these stereotypes and present a psychological analysis that explores how Muslim women cope with their dominant representations in mainstream society, but also address ambivalences of resisting and fighting stereotypic attributions.
We will begin by first exploring dominant and stereotypical representations of the headscarf in our ‘Western’ context. We will then contextualise this with a review of international studies on wearing the headscarf in a minority context. Finally, we will provide an overview of our research methods. The main body of this article will consist of an empirical analysis of our interview material.
‘Western’ representations of the headscarf: Wearing the headscarf in a minority context
When examining ‘Western’ discourses 2 on ‘the Muslim woman’, there is a strong and problematic focus on the headscarf as a sign of oppression. Wearing the headscarf is frequently – and often simultaneously – associated with a ‘rigid’ Islam that constrains the personal liberty of Muslim women (see for instance Ahmed, 1992; Berg and Lundahl, 2016; Macdonald, 2006: 8; Razack, 2004: 130; Rommelspacher, 2009). Thus, Muslim women who wear the headscarf are represented as living within ‘traditional’ circumstances characterised by an inflexible set of ‘patriarchal’ and ‘conservative’ rules – hence are constructed as ‘backward’ (Bilge, 2010: 8; Macdonald, 2006: 8; Morey and Yaqin, 2011: 1–17; see also Vintges, 2012: 284). Compared with this, ‘Western’ women – who do not wear headscarves – appear ‘as educated, as modern, as having control over their bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions’ (Mohanty, 1988: 56). Accordingly, processes of ‘joyful unveiling’ discursively appear as positive counter-images to representations of wearing the headscarf (Macdonald, 2006: 10). These images represent ‘the Muslim woman’ as ‘free’, ‘emancipated’ and ‘self-confident’ as long as she ‘unveils’ herself and practises ‘Western’ appearance, such as wearing one’s hair loose, wearing lipstick, bikinis, short skirts/dresses, and/or high heels (Farrokhzad, 2002, 2006; Hametner et al., 2020). The trope of the ‘modern’ Muslim woman without the headscarf therefore acts as a counterpart to the stereotype of the ‘traditional’ Muslim woman. Strikingly, though media representations of Muslim women often seek to discuss ‘more important things’ such as women’s rights to employment, education and the vote, it is the ‘absence of the veil that captures primary attention’ (Macdonald, 2006: 11).
Importantly, the stereotypes produced by such discourses are not detached from daily life. Debates on Muslim women and the wearing of the headscarf (or not) as described above produce a multidimensional socio-media-political framework in which women who wear the headscarf are marginalised. Wearing the headscarf in such a minority context – as is the case in Austria, but also in other European countries which reproduce similar discourses on the Muslim ‘other’ (Carr and Haynes, 2015: 22) – becomes marked as ‘strange’. When individuals experience being confronted with stereotypes, they develop specific coping strategies with being labelled. For instance, Carr and Haynes (2015) identify two specific coping strategies of discriminated Muslims: one is a form of acceptance by focusing on de-escalation and retreat; the second one is characterised by an avoidance of the ‘public and commercial space in order to reduce vulnerability to attack’ (Carr and Haynes, 2015: 33). Additionally, Wagner and colleagues (2012: 521) identify different accounts of wearing the headscarf that vary in motivation ‘from religiously inspired arguments through to reasons of convenience, and to opposition against stereotypes and discrimination’. In this respect, consciously wearing the headscarf is also a form of resistance against ‘Western’ ‘modernity’ discourses, becoming a symbol of rebellion and a political statement.
Stereotypes of the headscarf and their effects on everyday life: A psychological perspective
Following these crucial perspectives on Muslim women’s daily living with stereotypic attributions, we specifically aim to shed light on Muslim women’s psychological strategies to cope with the problematic dichotomy, namely the ‘traditional’ ‘backward’ woman who wears the headscarf versus the woman taking the ‘modern’, ‘Western-like’ position who does not. At the heart of the analysis is thus the question of how concrete social positions and accompanying stereotypes affect individuals in their daily lives. In line with the studies presented above, we argue that stereotypical and socio-structural constructions co-constitute individual psychological processes. In such a perspective, individuals are constantly entangled with their social environments and therefore confronted with various social demands on ‘how to be’ (subject positions in discourse theory; see e.g. Davies and Harré, 1990). The psychological processing of such demands uses various mechanisms – from emotional (e.g. feeling uncomfortable because one cannot meet demands) to interactional processing (e.g. automatically assimilating or explicitly resisting certain norms).
In social psychology, which classically asks how ‘individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings’ (Allport, 1954: 5), studies mainly employ quantitative experimental settings in which distinct variables are extracted. In such experiments, these variables are controlled and modified in an artificially produced setting. In so doing, the wider cultural, social and/or political frameworks are often overlooked. By situating our analysis in a socio-critical qualitative framework, we adopt a more critical social psychological perspective in which the individual is understood as embedded in their concrete everyday lives (Kühn, 2014). Our stance is specifically located within critical social psychological perspectives. Coming from a German-speaking tradition of qualitative social research (e.g. Bohnsack, 2014; Przyborski and Slunecko, 2009), we are interested in concrete experiences and ritualised practices of dealing with stereotypes that are grounded in and deeply entangled with social practices and contexts. Contrary to discursive psychology (e.g. Potter and Wetherell, 1987) – which is also considered a major strand of critical social psychology in the English-speaking area (e.g. Gough et al., 2001) – we do not primarily address the thematic analysis of people’s concrete utterances, ‘the form and content of self-construction’ (Gough et al., 2001: 91) in direct response to discourses and discourse positions. Our focus is more on the practical, implicit knowledge that is embedded in such responses, the ritualised coping strategies, and the deeply personal meanings that are most commonly referred to only in an indirect manner.
Therefore, and regarding our research design, we use a methodological position in which we exceed the ‘face-value’ of data (see also Walkerdine et al., 2001: 96) 3 and provide an in-depth analysis of strategies people use in their everyday practices. Furthermore, to empirically address this entanglement of social stereotypes and individual psychological processing, we invented a research design that aimed to triangulate a critical discourse analytical approach with biographical interviews. In the first phase of research, we conducted a critical discourse analysis, following Jäger (2012), to identify prominent discursive tropes in Austrian media. Using the example of women’s magazines (see Hametner et al., 2020), we identified topics of media discourse that highlighted the dichotomy between Muslim women who wear the headscarf and Muslim women who do not (for further information on the discourse analytical approach, see Hametner et al., 2020). We extended our discursive approach to also include four in-depth narrative interviews (following Schütze, 1983) that explored the everyday experiences of Viennese Muslim women and provided insight into the psychological dimension of our research interest. We recruited our research participants in Vienna by snowball sampling. The research participants’ profile was characterised by two key features: (1) Muslim affiliation and (2) migratory background. Additionally, we sampled equally both Muslim women who wore the headscarf and those who did not, for we aimed to provide exploratory data with regard to the discourse being examined that also addresses various – often diffuse – ‘groups’ of Austrian Muslims. We conceptualised the interview approach as a small-scale study that could provide first insights into Muslim women’s experiences and their psychological coping strategies with dominant discourses about the headscarf in contemporary, ‘Western’ European countries, such as Austria. 4
According to their narrative character, we began the interviews with an open stimulus (Przyborski and Wohlrab-Sahr, 2013) generally asking the research participants about their experiences as Muslim women living in Vienna. After this introductory stimulus, an open interview phase followed, covering the women’s subjective interpretations of more specific experiences relevant to our area of research. We noted keywords from their stories that required further elaboration and addressed them afterwards, in a subsequent phase of open immanent questions (such as ‘you mentioned being with a good friend in school, can you tell me more about it?’). These follow-up questions were asked only when the interviewee had brought her initial narration to an end. Next, another phase of questioning followed, aimed to trigger narrations from the interviewees on topics not yet addressed by the interviewees themselves (such as ‘we haven’t been talking about experiences at governmental institutions, could you please tell me something about that?’). This concluded the interview process.
We analysed the interviews subsequently by means of the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2014). This method provides an in-depth analysis focusing on habitual practices and is based on the theoretical framework of Mannheim’s (1980) concept of conjunctive experience. To access this knowledge formed by habit for analysis, the methodology of the documentary method distinguishes between two levels of everyday meaning production. One level is reflectively accessible – this is called ‘communicative’ knowledge. It is what we can explicitly discuss and what we can reflexively recall, such as dictionary or ‘common’ knowledge. The other level is implicitly embedded in our everyday practices, thus mostly not reflectively available. For the presentation of the analysis, we will thus mainly focus on the second level of habitual practices and ask how Muslim women experience stereotypical dichotomising and how they psychologically cope with it. The application of the documentary method is thus useful for understanding and reconstructing Viennese Muslim women’s daily practices that are embedded in specific (recurrent) experiences with the mainstream society (such as ‘othering’ experiences and coping strategies). Following increasing demand for approaches that examine one’s ‘own everyday experiences’ (Duits and van Zoonen, 2006: 115) and ‘excluded’ voices (Kemp, 2010: 2), in the next section we will explore the everyday practices of Muslim women.
Muslim women’s subjective experiences with stereotypes and their psychological coping strategies
To start our empirical analysis, we firstly introduce our four interviewees: Alev, Berfin, Canan and Dilan. Alev migrated from Turkey to Vienna together with her parents when she was two years old. At the time of the interview, she is 24 years old and starting a postgraduate master’s study programme in Vienna. Berfin was born in Egypt and came to Vienna together with her parents when she was 12 years old. At the time of the interview, she is, like Alev, 24 years old and takes classes in a technical bachelor’s programme. Canan is a Turkish migrant in her mid- to late twenties and retail worker, but she does not have a steady job at the time of the interview. She is a single mother. Dilan is also a Turkish migrant and is in her mid- to late twenties. Regarding their visibility as Muslim, Alev and Dilan do not wear the headscarf whereas Berfin and Canan do.
The need to explain and justify one’s position in relation to the headscarf
Resonating with our analytical focus on how Muslim women individually experience and cope with prevalent dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes of ‘the Muslim woman’, we found that the headscarf was heavily discussed in the interviews. All the interviewed women (Alev, 106–109; Berfin, 29–34; Canan, 14–21; Dilan, 12–14) thematised the headscarf without being explicitly asked (our introductory stimulus asked for ‘specific experiences’ they had ‘as Muslim woman in Vienna’). Importantly, the dichotomy – wearing the headscarf versus not wearing it, and its associated attributes of ‘backward’ and ‘passive’ versus ‘modern’ and ‘active’ – is strongly negotiated when talking about their own positions in society. For instance, Alev states: I don’t wear the headscarf, and people always try to divide me in, is she one of the good Muslim women, or is she one of the bad Muslim women? And then there is the question: does your mother wear the headscarf? (106–109)
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So, Alev does not only experience the continuous division and categorisation by choosing to wear the headscarf versus not wearing it, but she also refers to an explicit social hierarchy: those who choose not to wear the headscarf, just as she does, are associated with being a ‘good’ Muslim woman. Not wearing the headscarf therefore appears as something positive. Thus, she negotiates both: the dichotomous subject positions provided by the discourse and the act of being categorised in a dichotomous way.
Likewise, Berfin, who wears the headscarf, immediately raises the headscarf after the introductory stimulus. For her, being Muslim additionally marks a position of being ‘different’ – being ‘the other’ – versus being ‘normal’: . . . when working in groups, I felt like if I wear the headscarf they might think I am different and I somehow have to show that I’m not different that I talk normally that I take things completely easy and that I am completely normal and then also act just normal and that I perform well. (29–34)
Again, she experiences wearing the headscarf as an act that is constantly related to an external value judgement – the one who is judged, the Muslim woman, experiences being constantly and consistently marked as ‘the other’ (either by being ‘different’ vs ‘normal’ or by being ‘good’ vs ‘bad’). Hence, regardless of the actual wearing of the headscarf, and even when categorised as the ‘good’ Muslim woman – the Muslim women we interviewed experience a need to negotiate wearing the headscarf in relation to their own position as being Muslim as a core trope in their narrations.
Everyday experiences with stereotypic ‘Western’ presumptions of oppression
Not only do the interviewees experience the need to discuss their (societal) position in relation to wearing the headscarf (or not) as essential; they also see themselves confronted with the unidimensional ‘Western’ assumption that the headscarf is a sign of patriarchal oppression: . . . and then you’ll hear from teachers in the gym, when you’re only among girls, the same questions, they will ask ‘will you choose your husband yourself or will your parents choose him for you?’ I constantly got such questions, I think every year from the same teachers. (Dilan, 17–20)
Dilan describes being confronted with the topic of arranged/forced marriage. This is happening ‘continuously’ (‘every year from the same teachers’) within a context of mainstream society, her school. Berfin similarly describes that there are people in mainstream society ‘who simply have the image of the headscarf, for instance, that the parents persuaded you to wear it’ (4–6). Additionally, Dilan says that she ‘always had to explain that not everybody has to wear the headscarf’ (14). In the way she speaks about Austrian presumptions regarding wearing the headscarf, there is a double ‘must’: (1) she is confronted with mainstream society’s belief that there is a ‘must’ to wear the headscarf – which finds expression in generally (‘everybody’) presuming patriarchal oppression (‘has to wear a headscarf’). (2) Simultaneously, there is a ‘must’ to explain (‘had to explain’) the individual position in relation to dominant, stereotypical representations of the Muslim women who wear the headscarf. Hence, the continuous (‘always’) confrontation with Western assumptions about oppression becomes a constraint itself, namely a ‘must’ to explain one’s own position in relation to the stereotypic discursive assumptions one is confronted with.
This need to justify and explain one’s choice of whether or not to wear the headscarf continually exists. The constant justification cannot and has not changed the narrative Muslim women are confronted with. Though there are enduring efforts to explain their position, the same questions repeatedly arise. When Dilan talks about teachers who ‘continuously’ ask her about wearing the headscarf (see above) she additionally states: . . . they didn’t give a damn how often you’ve already explained it to them, they somehow didn’t want to believe it. (19–20)
In this extract, Dilan expresses her anger with mainstream society by conceptualising the lack of understanding as wilful. She feels that mainstream society has the power to continuously confront her with the same questions, and thus she finds herself in a position where her experiences are repeatedly re-framed by dominant and problematic discourses. She ‘constant[ly]’ explains herself with the result that her position is still – continuously (‘every year from the same teachers’) – reframed within ‘Western’ discursive knowledge (‘they somehow didn’t want to believe it’). Additionally, Alev emphasises that she cannot speak without thinking about the consequences of what she is saying, rather: . . . every experience I talk about is immediately related to the whole group and I am totally aware of that. It is extremely exhausting but meanwhile I have friends with whom I can talk about it, at least. With people I don’t really know I have to swallow quite a lot. (183–188)
Firstly, she stresses the necessity of her continuous awareness of the fact that her position is not for herself but related to ‘the whole group’. Secondly, she experiences a knowledge hierarchy that causes her to adapt to her surroundings and adjust what she can say and what she must ‘swallow’. For this reason, mainstream society’s attributions limit her ability to express herself: contents must be chosen carefully, as her individual experience is projected upon the whole group; therefore, she, as an individual, represents a wider ‘group’, which silences her in certain contexts.
Psychological coping strategies with dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes
The two research participants who did not wear the headscarf experienced this as an advantage as it enabled them to speak more freely. In this context, not wearing the headscarf, as well as adapting ‘Western’ looks, is – just as within the discourse – of major importance. Alev, for instance, considers the absence of the headscarf and with that her position as a ‘good’ Muslim woman as a ‘privilege’: . . . that I constantly simply by how I dress or how I behave become assessed by other people as one of the good and then I do not have to struggle with certain stereotypes. (125–129)
The public perception of her ‘uncovered’ body is – when affirming ‘Western’, presumably ‘modern’, ways of dressing – a resource (‘privilege’): something that ‘protects’ her from being confronted with negative ‘stereotypes’. By conceptualising this as a privilege, she refers to the social hierarchy that is associated with wearing the headscarf (or not) and the fact that women wearing the headscarf have to deal with exclusionary practices she does not have to ‘struggle with’.
Similarly, Dilan experiences benefits from being an ‘invisible’ Muslim, as she is not directly recognisable: ‘Regarding my looks, one doesn’t really know that I am Muslim’ (29–30). This enables her to advocate for other ‘visibly’ Muslim women, as she ‘fights’ for ‘other’ Muslim women and their rights (72–77). However, by fighting for ‘other’ Muslim women, she is put in a position that calls upon her to affirm the ascribed ‘good’ position as Muslim woman who does not wear the headscarf (something we will address in more detail in the subsequent analysis). Looking at the different ways of negotiating discursive attributions, the question arises: How do the Muslim women we spoke to cope (emotionally, cognitively, relationally) with stereotypes as well as the continuous demand for explanation and justification? To answer this question, we identify four coping strategies which we address in the following sub-sections.
Normalisation and acceptance
Normalisation as a form of acceptance is dominated by the cognitive representation that it ‘could be worse’, which may act as a form of individual psychic arrangement with being ‘othered’. For instance, when problematising stereotypes, Canan states that she is frequently confronted with anti-Muslim stereotypes, because she wears the headscarf: If you say something back, this will result in a big fight, and I don’t want to do that in front of my kids. This is why I keep my mouth shut . . . but that happens everywhere, even more in the Netherlands, in France, in Turkey. It can’t be helped. (36–41)
Firstly, she swallows her anger and protest, which requires individual effort. She remains silent (‘keep my mouth shut’) and refuses to have ‘a big fight’. Secondly, she assumes that racism is everywhere and even worse elsewhere. As she perceives that the reality of her ability to act is limited (‘it can’t be helped’), she uses an individual strategy of relativisation: if it is worse elsewhere, her subjective position in Austria becomes less problematic, whereby she can psychologically find relief.
Another form of normalising is evident in the case of Berfin: So, I can imagine, if somebody comes into an environment where no one has a headscarf or looks Muslim or dresses differently and people do not know anything about it that they can’t imagine what it is about. This is why you have to deal with it. (42–46)
In Berfin’s view, it is understandable (‘I can imagine’) that people react to the ‘unknown’. Consequently, she affirms that the Muslim women who wear the headscarf are different. She considers it important to deal with that difference and to live with it. This demonstrates another habitual strategy of emphasising one’s own individual action, which she considers obligatory (‘you have to deal with it’), rather than demanding mutual responsibility wherein mainstream society must also engage in integration processes.
Personal effort and achievement
A second mode of psychological coping with the dichotomous discursive positions is to highlight one’s own performance as beyond the ‘normal’ – a habitual strategy Berfin uses by extensively describing how she became a high achiever at university. Interestingly, this mode seems to be interrelated with her ‘visibility’ as a Muslim woman; as she wears the headscarf, her internalised self-identification as ‘the other’ leads her to recurrently stress her performance to counter ‘othering’: At university, I showed that I am also simply one of the best and I found that somehow one had to show effort in order to get ahead and I have tried, I did all I could and I think this is a step in the right direction. (81–86)
She assumes that her willingness to achieve in university guarantees her success in her personal development. In conjunction with another interview extract where she states that she has to ‘somehow’ show ‘that I’m not different’ (31), this reveals a modus of compensation: what she tries to compensate for is being the ‘other’/‘unknown’. The way in which she copes with her attributed ‘otherness’ is by becoming a high achiever and excelling in university (‘I think this is a step in the right direction’).
Canan, who has trouble finding a job due to wearing the headscarf, also highlights her will to achieve by stating: That disturbs me, because I can work just as the others, no matter if I’m Muslim, I can perform. (27–28)
In this extract, Canan is bothered by the fact that wearing the headscarf limits her possibilities to find a job, but she also highlights what she could achieve if she had work. Again, she stresses her individual capacity instead of elaborating on what is problematic, such as being excluded from the employment market. However, what finds expression is how she could contribute – and that it is her labour power which is equal to the work ‘others’ (27) do. That being so, this becomes a strategy by which she psychologically validates her self-worth. She does not only present herself to us as ‘Western’ interviewers as someone who ‘can work’ and who ‘can perform’; she also reassures herself that she is not responsible for the problems she encounters in the labour market.
Self-criticism and reflexivity
Another habitual strategy is the mode of self-criticism and reflexivity, a psychological coping strategy that Alev uses when she discusses her own Alevi position as a Muslim woman who does not wear the headscarf – which, she says, is considered socially ‘superior’ in comparison to Sunni Muslim women who wear the headscarf and are considered ‘more traditional’. Crucially, Alev criticises this portrayal of Sunni Muslim women, arguing that other Alevis use their privileged position – and with it the dichotomous hierarchy of ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’ Muslim women – to their own advantage. She calls the problematic use of this dichotomy ‘Islamic racism’, which she also identifies in her own family (Alev, 60–61). Furthermore, she specifies that ‘Alevi people’, like her family, have a specific way of reproducing ‘Islamic racism’ (61–62): . . . the way people speak about women with the headscarf for instance, or that on the one hand it is said ‘oh yes, of course they have the right to practise their religion’ and so on, but then within the next sentence, people just say that they are not as far as we are, that they are not educated yet or not sophisticated, and that was somehow the mindset I grew up with. And it took me a very long time to overcome it. (77–82)
On levels of content, she considers it crucial that she not use her Alevi position to her own advantage of distinction as this would reinforce a hierarchy (the ‘modern’ vs the ‘traditional’ Muslims). The way she speaks about this topic shows a habitual way of coping: this ‘mindset’ is something she believes she individually had to overcome; therefore, this strategy is strongly reliant on her responsibility: she had to realise her family position was problematic in a first step, and in a second step, she, as an individual, had to ‘conquer’ this ‘mindset’ by learning to not evaluate her own position as superior.
Additionally, she proposes to pursue solidarity with and speak up for Muslim women who are in more marginalised positions. This becomes explicitly evident when she talks about an experience with a mixed group of friends (friends who wore the headscarf and friends, such as Alev herself, who did not) in her teens: . . . as a teenager, it was always satisfying for me to say ‘no, my mother does not wear a headscarf’. So, I always saw it as if it was something good, right? Because, I had internalised it. And in that vacation, I simply forgot one of my friends who was with me. She is one of my best childhood friends, I still share a flat with her and she is also Muslim, she is a Sunni Muslim. And I completely forgot that she was also there and I let her down, because – to the question of whether my mother wears a headscarf – I answered ‘no’ . . . and that is also just the reason why I identify much more with Muslim women in general, but simultaneously it is also simply important that I don’t forget that I have privileges in comparison to women who are visibly religious. (123–127)
Initially, it was the process of acting out her position that ‘let’ her best friend ‘down’. So, the act of answering a question – that also positively enhanced her position (‘it was always satisfying for me’) – is presented by her to come at the cost of one of her best friends (‘I completely forgot that she was also there’). Additionally, she explicitly reflects on her position as a ‘privilege’, feeling responsible for the ones who are close to her (as one of her best friends) – but also for ‘women who are visibly religious’. It is her ‘duty’ not to ‘forget’ that she has another position, and that this affects ‘other’ Muslim women. By reflecting on her privileged position, she highlights her advantages through the mode of self-criticism and thus habitually copes with the problematic hierarchy.
Criticism of mainstream society
A fourth way of coping with attributed stereotypes is to more strongly focus on the direct interaction with mainstream society. For instance, Alev – who mainly applies a self-reflexive mode of coping with ‘othering’ – occasionally breaks out of her individualised coping strategy. In one interview extract, she talks about a discriminatory situation in which she started an argument with representatives of mainstream society. She describes a school event she calls ‘multi-culti day’ (18). She felt that the majority spoke about ‘foreign’ pupils as if they ‘were not there’ (30). She then states that she ‘had such a fight’ (37) and emphasises that: For me, it goes without saying that I won’t put up with that, because I am a stubborn person, too. So, I began to argue with the teacher and then it was so nice that there were girls who felt a bit protected. (53–57)
On the one hand, arguing with the teacher provides her with a stronger and protective position and shows her ability to criticise mainstream society, which also makes her feel good (‘it was so nice’). On the other hand, this strategy involves the danger of unintentionally reproducing a ‘Western’ ‘victim’ metaphor, as it not only positions her as someone who can protect others, but simultaneously implies that there is a ‘victim’ in need of protection.
Additionally, Dilan problematises the lack of being considerate towards Muslim practices by members of the majority society: . . . in schools, no one considered us, if somebody said we don’t eat pork, the reaction was automatically ‘OK, then only vegetarian food’. They didn’t ask if one would like to eat turkey meat or beef, for them it was automatically that there is no other option. So, I had girlfriends and we were extremely irritated by that, because one doesn’t like to eat exclusively tomato soup simply because there wasn’t anything else and because other persons weren’t considered. (21–28)
By raising awareness of ‘other’ people’s needs, she calls on mainstream society to take responsibility. Additionally, she also directly accuses mainstream society of racism in another interview extract. For instance, she says that she got in a ‘fight’ with a policeman at her workplace. Someone had called the police to break up a fight between an Austrian and migrant woman. The fight had started when the Austrian woman had slapped a migrant woman’s child. Instead of objectively listening to all the people who were involved, Dilan states that the policeman immediately favoured the Austrian party and did not listen to the migrant woman’s complaint. Consequently, she told him: ‘that thing you do is very racist, are you aware of that?’ (Dilan, 107). By doing so, she does not only call for responsibility on the part of the policeman, but also for mainstream society’s responsibility to act.
That these two interviewees are the only ones to directly target members of the mainstream society as responsible agents might be due to their outward appearance: both do not wear the headscarf; Dilan even describes herself as having ‘light’ skin and hair, thus rendering her unidentifiable as Muslim (‘regarding my looks one doesn’t really know that I am Muslim’, 29–30). This again refers to stereotypical positions by which the assimilation to ‘Western’ looks allows subjects to step into a position that is less limited and limiting, and more capable of action. This finding suggests that the greater the outer appearance of assimilation, the more Muslim women can resist ‘othering’ through interactional means. However, this coping strategy is ambivalent, as it unwittingly expresses affirmation and reinforcement of the dichotomous and dichotomising societal stereotypes of the Muslim women wearing the headscarf as those in need of protection, versus their counter-image of ‘self-determined’ Muslim women who do not wear the headscarf.
Conclusion
Given the dichotomous and dichotomising stereotypes of ‘the Muslim woman’, two of the interviewees experience that in not wearing the headscarf, they have more opportunities in mainstream society. This becomes evident as the last-mentioned coping strategy, criticising mainstream society, is drawn upon by interviewees who do not wear the headscarf; for instance, this phenomenon is illustrated by Dilan’s statement: ‘regarding my looks one doesn’t really know that I am Muslim’. From a critical social psychological position, we consider this finding crucial, because this ‘strong’ and more visible position functions by unintentionally reproducing a discursive hierarchy. Moreover, the psychological coping strategies we identified in our interview data indicate that it is the interviewees who are responsible for either coping with ‘othering’ practices or fighting against them individually. This seems to be based on anti-Muslim sentiments that portray ‘the Muslim woman’ as ‘problematic’. This way of thinking legitimates the rhetoric that ‘the Muslim woman’ needs to change and adapt to mainstream society. Consequently, mainstream’s society responsibility is discursively neglected and projected onto Muslim women. We consider this an important finding in light of the rising Islamophobia that is not only evident in Austria, but also in Europe more widely (Kim, 2017).
The fact that we did not identify coping strategies that explicitly emphasise the women’s Islamic faith – a practice that, for instance, Mahmood (2005) stresses – may be due to the fact that our sample and analysis was not explicitly focused on subjective positions in relation to Islamic (feminist) practices, but was instead concerned with discursive constructions and attributions. As Chapman’s (2016: 237) recent study ‘on the intersecting socio-cultural forces and relations of power that engage processes of resistance and re-presentation’ suggests, a further broadening of the analytical focus as well as a larger sample size may reveal further coping strategies. However, what this research does offer is a first insight into how the Muslim women we spoke to negotiate their positionings in a minority context, which raises social psychological issues of living within social hierarchies. In a context such as Austria, where anti-Muslim sentiments are rife and right-wing politics are increasingly gaining power, we suggest it is crucial that these issues are further researched and understood.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the MA 7 – Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung der Stadt Wien; the Zukunftsfond der Republik Österreich under Grant [P16-2377].
