The Politics of the Headscarf and Recognition in Finland’s Integration Debates

Abstract

Muslim women and the Islamic headscarf are recurrent themes in Finnish socio-political discussions focusing on the limits and possibilities of immigrant integration. In this short study, I analyze the way Finnish political discourse is instrumentalized in order to negatively frame Muslim immigrant women (specifically those who wear the Islamic headscarf) as unable to integrate into Finnish society. The premise of my argument is the acknowledgement of integration as a two-way process and of individual identities as dependent on recognition by one's significant others. I thus argue that, for successful integration, society must facilitate recognition of the immigrants' religious identities and practices and avoid legislative governance measures such as headscarf bans which misrecognize Muslim women's identities. The history of Muslim presence in Finland goes back to the beginning of the 19th century when the country was annexed as an autonomous Grand Duchy to the Russian Empire. From 1809 onwards, Muslim members of the Russian army settled in Finland, and permanent immigration of Tatar petty traders from the Volga River area to Finland started in the 1870s. In 1917, Finland gained total independence from Russia, which allowed the Tatars living in the country, now former subjects of the Russian empire, to gain citizenship in independent Finland (Martikainen, "Muslimit Suomalaisessa Yhteiskunnassa"; Pauha and Martikainen). Today, the Tatar minority of Finland is a well-established cultural and religious group with congregations in Helsinki, Järvenpää, and Tampere.