Book review in American Journal of Sociology on The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging by Anna C. Korteweg, Gökçe Yurdakul

“The book is particularly promising so long as it maintains distance from the “national models” approach—the unfruitful tradition that has domi- nated the field of comparative immigration studies for far too long—by analyzing how certain key concepts have been mobilized in the specific contexts of the four countries. Korteweg and Yurdakul can then provide interesting insights into the specificities of various debates over the head- scarf, ranging from a rejection of the headscarf in France to its reinvention in Turkey. Rather than looking at general immigrant integration policies or questions of secularism in liberal democracies, the authors analyze how the headscarf as a perceived threat has factored into the production of national narratives of belonging.”

American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 121, No. 2 (September 2015), pp. 629-631