VU Research Portal Framing the hijab Lettinga, D.N. 2011 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Lettinga, D. N. (2011). Framing the hijab: The governance of intersecting religious, ethnic and gender differences in France, the Netherlands and Germany. VU University Amsterdam. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 Framing the hijab The governance of intersecting religious, ethnic and gender differences in France, the Netherlands and Germany 1 Thesis committee : Prof.dr. Han Entzinger Prof.dr. Birgit Sauer Prof.dr. Thijl Sunier Prof.dr. Mieke Verloo Dr. Chia Longman Dr. Marcel Maussen ISBN: 978-90-5335-424-7 Printed by: Ridderprint Offsetdrukkerij BV, Ridderkerk Lay out cover page: Dennis Schuivens © D. Lettinga, The Netherlands, 2011 All rights reserved. Save exceptions stated by law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. 2 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Framing the hijab The governance of intersecting religious, ethnic and gender differences in France, the Netherlands and Germany ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. L.M. Bouter, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen op maandag 4 juli 2011 om 15.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Doutje Nynke Lettinga geboren te Ferwerderadeel 3 promotor: prof.dr. S. Saharso copromotoren: dr. C.M. Roggeband prof.dr. R. Koopmans 4 Acknowledgments Many people outside academia think that being a PhD student is a rather dull life. You only read books and sit behind your computer, so they say. While my friends will agree that sometimes I lived up according to the persistent image of an academic being a solitary bookworm, I also met plenty of people who are the living examples of the opposite. To start with my supervisors. Having been able to work closely together with my promoter Sawitri Saharso in the VEIL project, I got to know her as a socially engaged and strong personality who combines her theoretical thinking with excellent management skills and memberships in several boards and editorials. Sawitri, you showed me how to think pragmatically, seize opportunities when they arise, and how to build networks without trying to please everyone. Thank you for your commitment as my supervisor, as well as for all the extensive talks we had about moral and political dilemmas which have helped me sharpen my own thoughts. My co-advisors Ruud Koopmans and Conny Roggeband are two other counterexamples of scholars isolating themselves in the ivory tower of academia. Both of them showed me how one can be a creative, dedicated and zealous scholar without abandoning one’s private life or compromising one’s personal interests. Ruud, thank you for bluntly confronting myself with my own normative bias when practicing science. Thank you too for entrusting me to replace your preferred quantitative content-analysis with qualitative research-methods, while encouraging me to strive for valid truth-claims. Conny, when you stepped in my project half-way through, I was nearing one of these stages when a PhD student just wants to give up. It is thanks to you that this dissertation has been brought to an end. As a true coach, you gave me the courage to explore my own interests and to develop my strengths instead of focusing on my weaknesses. Moreover, the way you combine your career and ambitions with your private life showed me one can be a dedicated mother, amiable colleague and great scholar at the same time. Thank you. I also met other inspiring academics during the process of writing my dissertation. At the VU University, I had the pleasure to work with engaged juniors and seniors at the department of Sociology. Through my colleagues of the ‘Social Conflict and Change’ study group, I learned to reflect upon and appreciate different research interests and methodologies than those applied in this book. A special thanks goes to Boris Slijper, Jacqueline van Stekelenburg, Bert Klandermans and Evelyn Ersanilli who commented on articles or chapters, as well as to Marjoka van Doorn, Susanne Rebers, Emiel Hoogendijk, Erella Grassiani, Marije Boekkooi, and Jasper Muis for creating a pleasant (and sporty!) work environment. At the VU I was also lucky to become a member of the Migration and Diversity Centre of Halleh Ghorashi and Thomas Spijkerboer, where I met others interested in working interdisciplinary on questions of gender, multiculturalism and religion. The same was true for ‘Conny’s reading club’ where me, Melanie Eijberts, Nicole Brenninkmeijer and others discussed articles that fascinated us. Outside the VU, I met plenty of other scholars who combine their academic careers with great personalities and social or political activism. In the first three years of my project, I worked with twenty (mostly female) academics from seven different countries for the before-mentioned research project VEIL. Even though it was a challenge to work with that many different cultural and disciplinary differences, I got so much energy from the meetings we had across Europe that I sometimes still wonder whether I should not stay 5 within academia for the rest of my life. Birgit Sauer, Rikke Andreassen, Leyla Hadj-Abdou and Petra Rostock, I would particularly like to thank you for teaching me how to be both a cool feminist and an authentic, supportive scholar. Due to the cross-national comparative nature of my research, I did not only write books and merely sit behind the computer at the VU. Thanks to Anne Phillips, I was able to study at the gender institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science, where Gavin Poolman was so kind to host me in his apartment for two months. Thanks to Yves Sintomer, I was allowed to work for four months in his office in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRF) of the Université Paris 8 in Paris. Here I lived together with Marion Courtier, who was so patient to help me improve my broken French and introduced me to her network of Parisian friends. Thanks to Ruud and his staff, I spent some excellent months at the ‘Migration, Integration and Transnationalism’ department of the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin. Due to my roomies Nesrin and Raja, these six months in Berlin became unforgettable. Here I also met Ines Michalowski, who gave me the opportunity to join an international network of other young scholars working on comparative research on immigrant integration, including Marcel Maussen and Saskia Bonjour. I would like to thank the former for his sharp comments on preliminary work and the latter - but also others - for pleasantly working together on articles, like before- mentioned Sawitri, Conny, and Rikke, but also Bregje Beekers, Gily Coene, and Ans Merens. But still, now and then I did turn into a solitary book worm, which is not healthy if you stay it for too long. Thanks to my friends, family and later my ‘lief’, I managed to put into perspective my dissertation and keep enjoying all other things that excite me. Filip, Els and Madelon: thank you for cheering me up when I was down by making me laugh and by listening and advising (all), by cooking delicious diners or accompanying me on great trips to Morocco and Iran (Els), by taking me out to the movie, park or for lunch (Filip), by running together (Madelon), and even by helping me with the references list in the dead of winter at the VU (Madelon and Els). Thank you, my ‘Yassassin’ friends, for dancing, diners and wine, and for understanding my absence during the last few months when I was finishing this trajectory. Thank you big time, my overseas friends David Mandel-Anthony and David Carpman, for the editing work and for showing me that distance does not matter in true friendships. Thank you Femke Kaulingfreks and Ykje Vriesinga for all the mind- breaking thoughts and fun we share, and for your comments on some of my chapters. Thanks also to all ‘Doetankers’, for creating a creative platform where we put theory into action. Thank you Dennis, for entering my life during the two last years of my PhD, making these much more easy and fun. Finally, I want to thank my family who receive my deepest gratitude for their continuous moral support, unbelievable faith in me, and simple love. I was so lucky to be born in a family of six children, which got even more extended over time with fantastic brothers and a sister in law, a nephew and several nieces. Thank you Yt and Johannes, Tjit and Thierry, Gerlant (also for the figures!) and Marien, Berber and Michiel, and Skelte and Mireille for being proud, regardless whether I am a dr.