This study focuses on the experiences of women wearing hijab in the Swedish labour market. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with six veiled women who have managed to find their ways to the labour market in Sweden. The study shows that, although the hijab is an important part of a woman´s identity in terms of her religious belief and practice, it is still hard for a woman wearing hijab to be accepted in the Swedish labour market and the Swedish society as a whole. This type of prejudice leads to discrimination and prejudice and deteriorating psychosocial work environments for veiled women. Postcolonial and intersectional perspectives which have been used at the macro level constitute the main theoretical approaches in the study. The analysis has produced results which show that discrimination against veiled women is very extensive in the Swedish labour market and in the Swedish working life. It has also become apparent in the study that veiled women have minimal trust in the labor market due to their experiences of discrimination. A side outcome of the study is the veiled women’s feelings of not being welcomed by feminist groups in Swedish society. Based on the analysis, it has also emerged that women who wear headscarves in our interviews do not feel welcome in feminist groups because of the hijab.

In 1639, a law prohibiting women any head covering; veil, mantilla, manto for example, is promulgated for the fifth time in the Iberian Peninsula under the penalty of losing the garment, and subsequently incurring more severe punishments. Regardless of these edicts this social practice continued. My dissertation investigates the cultural representation of these covered women (tapadas) in Spain and the New World in a vast array of early modern literary, historical and legal documents (plays, prose, and regal laws, etc.). Overall, critics associate the use of the veil in the Spanish territories with religious tendencies and overlook the social component of women using the veil to simply explain it as a mere fashion practice. In my dissertation, I argue that it is more than just a garment; the veil was used by women to make political statements, thereby challenging the restrictive gender and identity boundaries of their epoch. A critical analysis of early modern historical and legal peninsular texts and close-readings of Golden Age literary works, together with colonial cultural productions, allow me to identify patterns in how the tapadas were represented both artistically and culturally. Accordingly, my project attempts to reassess the significance of the tapadas in Hispanic culture for 350 years and demonstrate how their resilience to stop using the veil publicly is symptomatic of the absolutist monarchy inefficiencies in imposing social control. I move away from the tendency to investigate works including tapadas exclusively, and I conclude by reconstructing more accurately their cultural impact on the social dynamics in Spain as well as the New World.

This research explores how women who wear the veil face discrimination and everyday racism in society. The purpose of the study is to investigate how veiled health care workers experience discrimination and everyday racism in health care from colleagues and patients. By studying women's vulnerability, it is possible to gain a better understanding of what veiled women go through. The veiled women meet new patients and colleagues every day. Every day is a new challenge for them. These women have to endure racist and discriminatory comments from patients and colleagues on a daily basis, which results in them being affected in their work. I interviewed four veiled healthcare professionals who were willing to share their personal experiences with discrimination and everyday racism. The results showed that the women used humor to deal with racism and all respondents suffered from anxiety and pressure when dealing with patients and colleagues. The respondents felt subordinated and excluded. They experienced ethnic discrimination and religious discrimination. The patients and colleagues could express hostility towards the veil and assume that the women were oppressed because they wore the veil.

Dans cette thèse, insérée dans la cadre de la sociologie de la connaissance, nous nous intéressons à étudier les discours circulant en France sur un comportement vestimentaire, le port du voile. Notre approche porte sur des discours : le premier celui des acteurs sociaux concernés par ce comportement vestimentaire, des jeunes femmes concernées par le port du voile. Le deuxième discours est celui de la presse écrite. Notre travail se base, essentiellement, sur la théorie de Boltanski, pour l'analyse des entretiens, et sur celle d'Habermas, pour l'analyse des discours de la presse écrite. Le traitement de la question de notre recherche, le port du voile, nous a cheminé à interroger la littérature sur la sociologie de journalisme et à établir un rapport articulant les communications journalistiques avec les thématiques théoriques concernant « l'espace public » en retraçant la surmédiatisation et la politisation liées à ce sujet. Nous nous sommes également intéressée à la question du port du voile en tant que pratique vestimentaire et pour la comprendre nous avons donné la parole, à travers des entretiens individuels, aux acteurs de cette pratique.Ce travail a été effectué dans une perspective multi-méthodologique : nous avons à la fois effectué deux types d'analyse : une première analyse discursive, qui nous a permis d'illustrer les procédures journalistiques utilisées dans le traitement da la question du port du voile dans notre corpus de la presse écrite (Le Figaro, Le Monde, Libération et L'Express). Et une deuxième analyse thématique qui nous a conduite à saisir les sentiments, le « vécu » et la « volonté » de personnes qui ont décidé ou qui désirent porter le voile. / In this thesis which would be classified under the sociology of consciousness we focus on the study of the common mainline discourse regarding the Muslim women dress behavior of the veil. Our methodology is based on the speech discourse analysis of : firstly the speech discourse of the socials actors directly involved in this behavior; i.e. the young girls concerned with wearing the veil, most of which already do, or would like to wear it. The secondly is the speech and language used by the printed press in regards to this issue. Our work is primarily based on Boltanski's theory of the interviews analyzing, and on Habermas's work on the speech analyzing of the press.The studying of our research, the veil, walked us to examine the literature on the sociology of journalism and to link between the journalistic communication and those theoretical subjects concerned with the “public space” by tracing the media hype and the politicizing connected with this issue. We also addressed the veil wearing as a customs and dress-code issue. Therefore, and to better understand it, we gave the stage to those directly involved with this practice through individual interviews.This work was carried out in a multi-methodological perspective; whereby we made two types of analysis : The first is a discursive analysis, which allowed us to illustrate the journalistic procedures used in dealing with the issue of the veil amongst a sample of press outlets we choose (Le Figaro, Le Monde, Libération and L'Express). The second is an objective analysis that led us to understand the feelings, the "coexistence" and the "will" of those individuals who have decided or who want "to wear the veil."