Wearing the Hijab. Cultural Awareness, Cross-Cultural Competence and Interactions in an Unfamiliar Cultural Context

Law, Cultural Studies and the "Burqa Ban" Trend: An Interdisciplinary Handbook offers an in-depth and multi-perspective account of the "burqa ban" trend. With a focus on Europe and America, this book examines the law at national and international levels. Its interdisciplinary approach encompasses ethics, gender studies, philosophy, political science and religion to provide much needed insights into value and identity politics, diversity, discrimination and human rights, in addition to the discussions surrounding the courts' contradictory judgments. The chapter aims to analyze the relevance of cultural awareness, cross-cultural competence, and the emerging concept of cultural humility in fostering the integration of immigrants in contexts perceived as unfamiliar. The authors adopt positive organizational scholarship as their theoretical framework to highlight the conditions under which positive results are likely to emerge. The empirical research considers the experiences and perceptions of 216 veiled women in their daily interactions in the south of Italy. The general purpose is to understand if wearing the ḥijāb in a cultural context different from one’s own affects the way of interacting with people in the community belonging to the dominant culture, the freedom to express their religious beliefs, and the meaning of the veil, the ḥijāb. The specific purpose is to analyze whether improvements in cross-cultural competence create positive conditions for the integration of immigrants (and their families) in their daily and work lives. Overall, this study offers a cross-cultural perspective and a dialogue on education to reinforce the notion that the efforts to integrate people with different cultural backgrounds can be effective when they learn from each other in the context in which they live.