Gendernativism and Liberal Subjecthood: The Cases of Forced Marriage and the Burqa Ban in Switzerland

Abstract

Ideas of gender equality and women’s rights have come to play a crucial role in national politics of belonging and Othering, in Europe and beyond. Based on two case studies in Switzerland, we introduce the concept of gendernativism. We consider gendernativism as a particular configuration of boundary making between supposedly unfree migrant (descendant) and Muslim women and free Swiss/Europeans which is anchored in a nativist underpinning of membership. We argue that this dichotomy (re)produces an illiberal state and is a powerful means of an intersectional, gendered, migranticized, and racialized exclusion based on nativist grounds.

Respecting the values of the constitution: Integration in the community of value(s)

“…This linkage of abstract values and very specific, concrete everyday practices considered to be part of a unique and essential Swiss culture-and, importantly, not of "other cultures"-reflects what I refer to as the culturalization of values. As we see in the questions above, this culturalization is most salient with regards to religion (meaning here: Islam) and gender equality (see also Dahinden and Manser-Egli, 2022). Linking these two issues, the most important symbol of this culturalization of values is probably the handshake: Shaking hands (with someone of the opposite sex) is considered a crucial element of Swiss culture and thus of respecting the values of the constitution.…”

“…Lastly, the examples defining non-compliance with constitutional obligations refer to compulsory attendance at school including mixed-gender (school) physical education and swimming lessons; and the rejection of recognized forms of expressions of respect towards teachers or employees of public authorities. These very particular examples of the (non-)respect of constitutional values such as mixed swimming lessons, the handshake (see below) or forced marriage (see Dahinden and Manser-Egli, 2022) stem from highly mediatized and politicized cases and jurisprudence, targeting specific groups of (migranticized) minorities. Of course, this selection of examples (and not others) in the official instructions influences how the requirement is applied in practice; who is asked specific questions and who is not, as the following quote by a case worker illustrates:…”

“…The underlying idea according to which the liberal state is only for liberal people is what Joppke (2008) identifies as the exclusive and identity-forging dimension of particular universalism. As in the case of the North Macedonian couple, gender equality is in fact the liberal value in the name of which the culturalized and migranticized boundary of the community of value(s) is maintained-a phenomenon that we have theorized as gendernativism (Hadj Abdou, 2017;Dahinden and Manser-Egli, 2022, see also Farris, 2017).…”

The genealogy of integrationism: Ideational foundations of the politics of immigrant integration

“…If the basic assumption of liberalism is a society of shared values, consensus, and toleration (as per Schinkel, 2017, p. 23), the logic of ethnicization of different segments of "society" and the reification of culture (whether in assimilationist or in multiculturalist discourses) does not necessarily run counter to its tenets. This explains why it was precisely in the Western "cradles" of liberal democracy that integrationism blossomed, and why there was a necessity to center integrationist discourses around the question of adherence to "liberal values" (see, for e.g., Kotef, 2015;Dahinden and Manser-Egli, 2022). Since its involvement in matters of border control and diversity governance in the 1990s, the EU became a notable promotor of this kind of liberal integrationism.…”

Violent Times, Rising Resistance: An Interdisciplinary Gender Perspective

“…"Others" are portrayed as illiberal and, thus, a threat to European values because of their alleged lack of respect for women's rights and gender equality, which is seen as immutably grounded in their "culture" (Lépinard 2020). While a similar discursive logic was employed during the colonial era to justify "civilizing" supposedly oppressed women in the colonies, in the postcolonial era, such ideas target so-called migrants and Muslim women and their "integration" in European countries (Korteweg and Yurdakul 2014;Dahinden and Manser-Egli 2022). This logic has given rise to a double standard in assessing gender inequalities with far-reaching consequences: When determining gender equality that involves migrant or Muslim women, a lack of equality is migrantized, racialized, and interpreted as cultural, but when the focus lies on gender inequalities in Swiss society it is reduced to an individual or a psychological problem.…”