While gender has long played a key role in the politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2011), research indicates that nationalistic body politics increasingly require Muslims and those with non-Western backgrounds to signify individual integration through cultural participation (De Waal 2021; Wodak 2021), particularly regarding veiling in Europe (Hadj Abdou 2017, Sauer 2016). This paper shows how judicial rulings frame coeducational swimming lessons in public schools as a site where such cultural participation is required of school-aged Muslim children. Specifically, through a critical discourse analysis of the foremost German case on a student's right to freedom of conscience, state control of education, and Islamic dress, it reveals how the judiciary validates a form of sociopolitical belonging in which the concept of integration is applied to bodily practices in an educational context. The research is based on a corpus consisting of the case's four judicial rulings; it represents the German court system from the court of first instance for administrative justice for the city in which the case originated (i.e., Frankfurt am Main) to the country's highest judicial authority, the Federal Constitutional Court. It is guided by the following research questions: How do judicial rulings construct, maintain, or reproduce the notion of what it means to belong and, by extension, how is integration marked through individual participation in activities that are defined as culturally significant? Three sub-themes emerged from the main theme of integration: individualized integration, belonging, and the role of the state. The findings show how a garment designed to meet the needs of Muslim women is recontextualized by the courts as a physical expression of German liberalism and tolerance even as the guidelines for when and how it is worn remain at the direction of the state and thus, limit individual agency. As research on the burkini is limited compared to other Muslim head and body coverings, this paper contributes not only to how legal discourse delineates and manages difference within society, but also adds to scholarship on how the veil is framed and regulated in nation-specific narratives (Korteweg and Yurdakul 2014; Rosenberger and Sauer 2012).
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