ABSTRACT
Veiled women are a visible part of the European streetscape, illustrating changes in the composition of Europe’s religious population. As in some Western European countries Muslims form the second-largest faith community, according to Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Islam has become a “signifi cant social and religious force in Western Europe” (2005: 2). Given the historical and political context, Muslims came to Western Europe mainly due to post-colonial immigration (United Kingdom, France), labor migration (Germany, Austria), and asylum seeking. After the Second World War, Western European countries were looking for “guest workers” and attracted mostly men to perform low-skilled tasks. However due to economic recession, since the 1970s several states began closing their borders to labor migrants, and family reunion and asylum became the most frequent-and often only-ways to enter and settle in Europe. The new immigration patterns had an impact on the transformation of the Muslim immigrant population: minority communities consist not only of single male migrants but of families who strive for permanent settlement. With respect to the headscarf it has to be mentioned that this was not an issue for the fi rst male-dominated generation of “guest workers,” whereas today women who come for family reunifi cation, and second-generation female immigrants, are wearing the veil to a large greater extent (Klausen 2005).
