Norms of Convivencia as Practices of Abjection: Saving the Nation by Saving the Muslim Girl

Abstract

In this historical inquiry, Belén Hernando-Lloréns uses the case of one young Spanish woman who was suspended for wearing a hijab to school to argue that norms of convivencia in culturally and racially diverse educational spaces work as a practice of abjection that excludes in the name of inclusion. She examines three strategies that made this girl’s veiling an issue of public safety: problematizing Muslim girls’ veiled bodies, normalizing what the responsible female citizen’s body looks like, and pathologizing the desire to veil. This inquiry, which is based on the analysis of policy and law, media, and educational research, contends that norms of convivencia in education carry embedded notions of a salvationist agenda that other and exclude those who deviate from normative, liberal images of a responsible personhood.