2025/08/13 by Tonje Baugerud · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Migration, Refugees, and Integration
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/01419870.2025.2529411
openalex publication_date 2025/08/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article examines how Norwegian Muslim hijabi women experience racialization in public space, using a mixed-method dataset to explore religious embodiment as a site of negotiation, exclusion, and belonging. It theorizes hijabi embodiment as borderland embodiment, arguing for a corporeal conceptualization of the hijab to move beyond reductive binaries embedded in racist and Islamophobic imaginaries. The analysis shows how religion functions as a racial signifier in Norway, where race is often obscured or denied. Synthesizing Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of the borderlands and Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology, I analyze participants’ experiences as simultaneously embodied, spatial, and relational. This approach foregrounds how religio-racial difference is produced, felt, and resisted in everyday encounters, situating the hijab not merely as a religious symbol but as a racialized extension of the body.