Burkini and the Definition of Diversity: Italy and Portugal in Comparison

When dealing with religious pluralism in European societies, the public and political debates often frame women’s rights as sites of tension between different religions, and between religious traditions and secular societies. In this perspective, women’s conditions often become the proofs of evidence of religious diversity, and the women’s bodies come to personify cultural identities, either religious, secular, or national. In light of the extensive debate on gender citizenship and the long-lasting discussion over the relationships between religion and political citizenship, the focus on religious women offers an interesting chance of exploring how religious and gender diversities are conceptualized and combined in the definition of citizenship. In this contribution I will focus on the “burkini affair”, comparing the development of the political discussion in the Italian and Portuguese press (2004-2016), in order to: (1) explore how the “burkini” has been constructed as a public issue; (2) compare the debate process in Portugal and Italy; (3) shed light on how religious and female agencies are variously combined in the representation of ‘Muslim women wearing burkini’.