Sweden’s Burka Ban: Policy Proposals, Problematisations, and the Production of Swedishness

Abstract

Between February 2002 and November 2018, Swedish politicians from the Centre, Christian Democrat, Moderate, Liberal and Sweden Democrat parties proposed policies to ban clothing variously referred to as the “burka,” “full-covering veil,” “face veil” and “niqab” (Arabic for face veil) at least 38 times, six at the national level and thirty-two at the municipal. Research suggests that circa 100 women in Sweden wear a “burka”; clearly these policy proposals have little to do with the burka’s prevalence. What, then, do these policy proposals attempt to govern? In this text we adopt feminist political scientist Carol Bacchi’s “what is the problem represented to be?” approach to analyse Swedish bills to regulate the burka. These policy proposals, we contend, have more to do with conceptualizing Swedishness than addressing an existing “problem” of women who wear burka.