Generations of Difference: Unveiling the politics of hijab for first and second generation Iraqi immigrant women in Toronto

Abstract

This paper looks at Iraqi women who have made the choice to adopt the veil having migrated to Toronto over the past ten years.  More specifically, the paper engaged the politics of generation in regards to who veils, why and the varied responses from their families and the community at large.  Based on a series of oral interviews collected over the past three years, this paper examined the expressions of ‘defensive modesty’ that Iraqi women express in reaction to the different cultural norms they encounter in Canada.  As these women navigate between old and new networks of Muslim, Christian and Kurdish Iraqis in Toronto, the veil becomes an expression of identity, modesty and individuality as well as its symbolic reference to religious observance.

The politics of generation features prominently in the subject of the veil for Iraqi immigrants because of the different motives that first and generation women express.  First generation women tend to make the decision to adopt the hijab before leaving the Middle East and often come to Canada wearing the veil.  Second generation Iraqi women who adopt the veil tend to do so after resettlement in Canada. Furthermore, young Iraqi women who chose to veil often come from moderate families in which their mothers and grandmothers are not veiled. The internal dynamics of these families suggest that many of these young women are reacting to desire and attempts by their parents to integrate into Canadian society, as well as the growing disconnect between the ideals and realities of returning to Iraq.  As the younger generation increasingly indentify with the homeland, they impose upon themselves standards of modesty suited for the homeland in an attempt to prevent the shame of being labeled as ‘loose western women’.  Ultimately, the veil becomes a means of ‘othering’ themselves from the perceived immorality of western culture and ‘corrupt Muslims’ in order to protect their modesty and identity for their future in Iraq.

This research for this paper is drawn from Nadia’s dissertation research, examining the reinvention of trans-generational female identity, and the role of religion in shaping the ongoing relationship with the homeland in the Iraqi diaspora to Canada and the U.S. With a view to exploring how women’s national and ethno-religious identities, as well as socio-religious hierarchies, are contested and re-conceived in the diaspora, her research examines how Toronto and Detroit have become primary sites of resettlement for Iraqis over the past three decades. As Iraqi refugees negotiate a place within these existing networks, the politics of generation are heightened as these women struggle to reconstruct family and identity amidst the pressures from networks in the homeland, Western ideals of family and womanhood, and codes of conduct imposed by other Arab diasporic communities.