The judicial politics of Burqa Bans in Belgium and Spain: socio‐legal field dynamics and the standardization of justificatory repertoires

Over the past decade, controversies over Muslim women's face veiling have become increasingly widespread in societies across Europe. This article comparatively explores the socio‐legal dynamics of claims making by proponents and opponents of prohibiting full‐face coverings in Belgium and Spain. In Belgium, a federal ban of full‐face coverings was adopted in July 2011 and, after intensive judicial struggles, received judicial validation by the Constitutional Court in 2012. In Spain, local burqa controversies led to municipal bans in the region of Catalonia in 2010, which were annulled by the Supreme Court in 2013 after effective legal counter‐mobilizations. In spite of the diverging legal outcomes, we argue that justificatory repertoires have become increasingly standardized as burqa controversies are transposed from locally embedded political fields to transnationally structured judicial fields. We suggest that this standardization of justificatory repertoires in the long run facilitates the rapid spread of burqa bans across Europe