Voilées et sportives : la norme contre l'émancipation/ Veiled and Athletic: Norms Versus Emancipation

This article draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with veiled Muslim women practicing various sports (football, swimming, rugby, volleyball, etc.) as well as with their coaches. We aim to examine their perceptions of how wearing the veil becomes an object of rejection, both within and through the sporting world in France. To this end, we employ Howard S. Becker’s interactionist approach to deviance. We show that what is considered “deviant” is not inherently problematic, but becomes so in relation to socially constructed and politically oriented norms. In this context, the veil is not merely a religious accessory: it crystallizes identity tensions and serves as a pretext for both actual exclusion (bans, denial of access to competitions) and symbolic exclusion (stigmatization, hostile gazes, persistent suspicion). The study highlights several key dimensions: sport as a space for self-realization, socialization, and adherence to rules, but also as a tool for social control and moral regulation. Finally, this work underscores how political discourses on the veil contribute to a strategy of mass alienation, shifting public debate from economic issues toward security and identity concerns, thereby diverting attention from pressing social problems such as inequality, unemployment, social exclusion, and segregation.