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Hijab, visibility and the performance of identity

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European Journal of Social Psychology, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)
Published online 2 July 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1955

Research article
Hijab, visibility and the performance of identity

NICK HOPKINS1* AND RONNI MICHELLE GREENWOOD2

1
School of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK; 2University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Abstract

Theories concerning the relationship between social identification and behaviour are increasingly attentive to how group
members emphasise or de-emphasise identity-related attributes before particular audiences. Most research on this issue is
experimental and explores the expression of identity-related attitudes as a function of participants’ beliefs concerning their
visibility to different audiences. We extend and complement such research with an analysis of group members’ accounts of their
identity performances. Specifically, we consider British Muslim women’s (n = 22) accounts of wearing hijab (a scarf covering the
hair) and how this visible declaration of religious identity is implicated in the performance of their religious, national and gender
identities. Our analysis extends social psychological thinking on identity performance in three ways. First, it extends our
understandings of the motivations for making an identity visible to others. Second, it sheds light on the complex relationship
between the performance of one (e.g. Muslim) identity and the performance of other (e.g. gender/national) identities. Third, it
suggests the experience of making an identity visible can facilitate the subsequent performance of that identity. The implications
of these points for social identity research on identity performance are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Self-categorisation theory (SCT: Turner, Hogg, Oakes,
Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) offers a theoretical framework
for understanding the relationship between social identifica-
tion and behaviour. It argues that when a social identification
is salient, group members’ behaviour conforms to their cogni-
tive representation of ingroup norms. Recently, this cognitive
analysis of identity-related behaviour has been complemented
by the observation that group members may present
themselves strategically. For example, group members may
display particular attributes so as to challenge outgroup stereo-
types of the ingroup (Hopkins et al., 2007; Klein & Azzi,
2001) or avoid the personal applicability of such stereotypes
(Wakefield, Hopkins, & Greenwood, 2012). Furthermore,
Klein, Spears, and Reicher (2007) suggested that group
members may publically perform their social identities in
order to mobilise others’ group behaviour or to consolidate
their own group membership. For example, those who believe
their group belonging is questioned may emphasise their
ingroup-relevant characteristics (Cheryan & Monin, 2005).
Moreover, this emphasis may depend on the audience’s iden-
tity (as when someone of Turkish heritage in the Netherlands
emphasises their Turkish identity to a Turkish audience and
their Dutch identity to a Dutch audience: Barreto, Spears,
Ellemers, & Shahinper, 2003).
We seek to contribute to this emergent interest in identity
performance through exploring a sample of British Muslim
women’s accounts of wearing hijab (a scarf covering their hair).
Wearing hijab reflects beliefs about Qur’anic injunction (for
explorations of such beliefs, see Read & Bartkowski, 2000,
and Ruby, 2006). However, there are multiple motivations
for adopting hijab, including communicative motivations
(Droogsma, 2007). Moreover, even if a primary motive is to
‘please God’ through conforming to religious injunction, the
continuing power of Orientalist and Islamophobic images of
hijab (Haddad, 2007) means that Muslim women must
inevitably reflect on the hijab’s visibility and how it may be
read by others (Peek, 2005).
Whereas much existing social identity-related research on
performance tends to explore the impact of manipulating
people’s beliefs about their visibility on their expression of
group-related attitudes (see Reicher & Levine, 1994), we
consider group members’ own accounts of their motivations
for making an identity visible. First, we consider Muslim
women’s wishes to visibly declare their Muslim identities.
Second, we consider how they believe such public declara-
tions of religious identity may be consequential for the
performance of other (e.g. national and gender) identities.
Third, we consider their accounts of how the visible
performance of their Muslim identity (wearing hijab) was itself
consequential for the performance of their Muslim identity.
Before proceeding to our own data, we consider first the
complex nature of British Muslim women’s identities.
Complex and Intersecting Identities
It has long been recognised that people belong to multiple
groups. However, much psychological research examines the

*Correspondence to: Nick Hopkins, School of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK.
E-mail: n.p.hopkins@dundee.ac.uk

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 6 March 2012, Accepted 5 April 2013

processes associated with action in terms of a single identity,
and, as Greenwood observes (Greenwood, 2012), when con-
sidering multiple identifications tends to adopt an additive
model, which misses the complex interpenetration of identities
and the creative hybridity that often results.
Insights into such complexity may be found in feminist
research, which is particularly sensitive to the consequences
of intersecting systems of domination and subordination
(e.g. concerning race, class and gender) for women’s experience
of social identities. In particular, this work considers how the
expression of one identity is always shaped by its intersection
with other identities (Shields, 2008). Other insights may be
gleaned from research concerning migration. Here, researchers
have addressed migrants’ investment in identities associated
with their country of origin and their current country. For exam-
ple, Berry (1980) argued that some migrants may identify with
the country of origin, the country of destination, neither or both.
This latter outcome—identification with both—has attracted
particular attention, especially as a simultaneous identification
with two non-convergent groups can take quite different forms
(Roccas & Brewer, 2002). For example, the two identities may
become compartmentalised such that the individual adopts one
identity in one context and the other in another. Or, the two
identities might be experienced as mutually constitutive. These
complexities in the relationship between an individual’s identi-
ties have been approached from diverse social psychological
perspectives, for example, cognitive-developmental theory
(Amiot, de la Sablonnière, Terry, & Smith, 2007), identity pro-
cess theory (Jaspal & Cinnirella, 2012), theories of Bicultural
Identity Integration (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005) and
Social Representations Theory (Howarth, Wagner, Magnusson,
& Sammut, 2013). Also, the intermingling of previously
separate cultural styles and practices has been conceptualised
in terms of ‘hyphenated’ identities (Fine & Sirin, 2007) and
‘hybridity’ (Back, 1996).
British Muslim Women’s Identities
Such hybridity is well illustrated in the history of British
Muslims. Many British Muslims have family connections with
Asia (e.g. Pakistan), identify strongly as Muslims, and with
UK national identities, for example, as British (Maxwell,
2006) or as Scottish (Hopkins, 2007; Saeed, Blain, & Forbes,
1999). Moreover, it is apparent from previous research that
many have engaged with the question of what it means to be
a Muslim in Britain. For example, for many British Muslims
of Pakistani heritage, there has been a re-labelling of certain
practices as essentially ‘Pakistani’ (or ‘cultural’) and as
distinct from ‘Islamic’. Furthermore, those practices judged
as more genuinely Islamic are often integrated with local
(British) cultural practices (Gilliat-Ray, 1998; Jacobson, 1997).
One implication of this mixing is that the resulting identi-
ties are less dependent upon family ethnic identifications or
traditional schools of Islamic thought and are distinctively
British (Nielsen, 1987). Indeed, although Muslim identities
are routinely viewed in essentialised terms, the reality is they
are diverse and contingent upon the local context in which
they are made and remade (Hopkins & Kahani-Hopkins,
2004, 2009). Another implication is that the questioning of
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hijab and the performance of identity 439
British Muslims’ Britishness may be experienced as entailing
not only the misrecognition of their national identity but also
the misrecognition of their religious identity (Hopkins,
2011). Still another implication is that despite the continuing
power of Orientalist and Islamophobic images (Haddad,
2007), the hijab may mean different things in different
communities and in different power relations (Franks, 2000;
Wagner, Sen, Permanadeli, & Howarth, 2012).
Studies with British Muslim women show they have been
at the forefront of such creativity and hybridity. For example,
those with South Asian connections have long participated in
all manner of public arenas that cut across South Asian tradi-
tions and schools of religious belief, and the resulting cultural
creativity (Werbner, 2004) is apparent in women’s clothing
practices. Although older women typically viewed traditional
‘Asian’ dress (e.g. salwar kameez) as a sign of being a good
Muslim, younger women often saw it as implying conformity
with a particular cultural tradition that they wished to distance
themselves from (Gilliat-Ray, 1998). In turn, younger women
began to invest the hijab with ‘new’ meanings. Although some
reported family pressure to wear it, others did not and reported
that they adopted hijab to negotiate everyday sexism, avoid
objectification (Dwyer, 1999) and negotiate access to public
space (Siraj, 2011; for similar analyses concerning Muslim
women in the USA see Droogsma, 2007; Ruby, 2006).
Moreover, wearing hijab allowed young Muslim women to
claim religious and moral authority and achieve a measure of
autonomy from parental restrictions (Dwyer, 1999; Read &
Bartkowski, 2000; Williams & Vashi, 2007).
Such creativity and hybridity do not mean that individuals
experience no difficulties in enacting their identities. As
already noted, feminist research shows that various forms of
discrimination (e.g. class, gender and ethnicity) intersect
(Shields, 2008). Certainly, analyses of British Muslim women
highlight the ways in which various social beliefs are ‘played
out’ on women’s bodies such that they experience a diverse
and shifting set of expectations from various others (Anthias,
2008; Werbner, 2004). Indeed, Anthias (2008) observes that
although the hijab may have new and complex meanings for
those who wear it, it may also carry residues of earlier
meanings that are especially relevant for particular audiences.
Older Muslim women may ‘read’ the hijab differently from
their daughters. So too, non-Muslims may interpret the hijab
differently, for example, as signifying Islamist threat, national
dis-identification and gender oppression (Haddad, 2007;
Williamson & Khiabany, 2010).
The Present Research
Here, we investigate British Muslim women’s understandings
of how they are perceived by others and how they believe such
perceptions shape their own identity performances. Whereas
experiments are ideal for investigating how visibility to an
audience impacts the expression of attitudes (Barreto et al.,
2003; Reicher & Levine, 1994; Wiley & Deaux, 2011), they
are less suited to exploring participants’ own understandings
of their identity performances, what they are designed to
achieve and how they may be subjectively experienced.
Indeed, researchers interested in how individuals’ performance
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)
440 Nick Hopkins and Ronni Michelle Greenwood
of their various identities (e.g. as British, as Muslim and as
women) inter-relate suggest that qualitative methods have distinct
advantages (see Bowleg, 2008; Shields, 2008; Warner, 2008).
We report data gathered through interviews with British
Muslim women and focus on their accounts of the performa-
tive significance of one of the most visible of identity
markers—the Islamic headscarf (hijab). As noted earlier,
although the decision to adopt hijab is shaped by beliefs about
Qur’anic injunction, Muslim women also reflect on its
symbolic significance and how it features in the public perfor-
mance of identity. In our analysis we consider participants’
reports of attempting to gain some control over their
categorisation by others through making their Muslim identity
visible. We also explore their accounts of how wearing hijab
could shape others’ assumptions about their national and
gender identities, and how participants’ beliefs about how they
were seen by others (their meta-perceptions: Vorauer, 2006)
shaped their performance of these identities. Finally, we con-
sider participants’ understandings of how the visibility of their
Muslim identity shaped their own behaviour.
Throughout, we foreground participants’ meta-perceptions,
how these shape their identity performances and how hijab
features in such performances. In addressing these issues, with
this sample, we do not seek to make empirical generalisations
about Muslim women’s behaviour. Rather, we wish to
complement and extend current thinking on the performance
of social identities (Klein et al., 2007). Thus, if there is to be
any generalizability, it is to be a generalisation of theoretical
insight into the dynamics of identity performance. Given our
interest in how hijab-wearing women reflect on their identity
performances, we do not consider (in any depth) the experiences
and accounts of those who do not wear hijab (for relevant
research, see Siraj, 2011, and Cole & Ahmadi, 2003).
METHOD
Sample
We interviewed 22 Muslim women contacted through various
organizations (e.g. Muslim associations and student groups).
Eighteen were students and four were graduates. With three
exceptions, their ages ranged from 18 years to mid-20s
(one was in her mid-30s, and two in their early 40s). Eighteen
had family heritages connecting them with Pakistan (sometimes
via Africa), one had a Saudi Arabian heritage and one a
Pakistani/Middle-Eastern heritage, and two were White
Scottish. Given the history of British Islam (in which dis-
tinctions between different religious traditions have become
less significant: Nielsen, 1987), no data were gathered on
participants’ identification with specific religious schools.
Nineteen wore hijab whenever in public, whereas the
others did so occasionally (e.g. at religious events). Of
these latter, one reported aspiring to wear hijab fulltime
when she had ‘improved’ her practice of Islam, and another
(the youngest) reported she would do so when married.
Although hijab can mean different things, it is used here
(as it was by our participants) to refer to a square scarf
covering the hair but not the face.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Interviews
The interviews were semi-structured, lasted 1–2 hours and
took place on campus or in community centres. Sixteen were
interviewed alone and six in two small groups (each involving
three participants). This mix arose from the preferences of
some (contacted through a Muslim association and who knew
each other) to be interviewed as a group. All those in the group
interviews wore hijab. The use of group interviews is com-
monplace in research on minority groups, as is the decision
to report data from individual and group interviews together
(Hopkins, 2007). As we do not make any claims about the
frequency with which participants exhibited particular
performances (but rather explore the range and complexity in
participants’ accounts), a mix of individual and group data is
not problematic. Moreover, the fact we have individual and
group interviews has advantages. Whereas an interview with
a single interviewee allows for more in-depth probing of an
individual’s views, group interviews provide a context in
which participants can compare and contrast their experiences.
This can be useful for bringing out differences in perspective
or in giving one confidence that what is said in a one-to-one
interview is not simply a function of that context but also
arises when ingroup members are present.
Neither of the interviewers (N. H. and R. G.) was Muslim.
Although being an ‘insider’ may bring certain advantages in
interview research, it can also be disadvantageous (Corbin
Dwyer & Buckle, 2009; Jaspal, 2009). For example, inter-
viewees may assume commonalities, which if disconfirmed
result in a sense of distance from the interviewer. Moreover,
being an ‘outsider’ allows one to present oneself as interested
but not invested in particular definitions of ingroup identity
(see Siraj, 2011, for a discussion of how a researcher’s hijab-
wearing impacted interviews with non-hijab-wearing women).
The interviews explored participants’ experiences of being
a Muslim at school, university, workplaces and so on; how
they believed Muslims were viewed by others and how this
made them feel; and how they saw the future for Muslims in
Britain and for themselves. Our questions did not anticipate
the topic of identity performance. Indeed, to the degree that
the performance of identities was discussed, it was because
when discussing how Muslims are seen by others, interviewees
raised the issue of how their own behaviour took others’
perceptions into account. Nor was our research focused on the
hijab. Rather, hijab-wearing was typically introduced by the
participants in the context of illustrating non-Muslims’ views
of Muslims.
Analytic Approach
One’s approach to interview data depends on one’s
conceptualisation of identity (Widdicombe, 1998). Given our
commitment to SCT’s perspective, we, in common with others
working in the social identity tradition (see, e.g. Drury &
Reicher, 2000), use interview data to gather insight into group
members’ experiences, states and behaviours in contexts
where their group memberships are relevant. Accordingly,
our approach can be characterised as ‘realist’ in the sense that
we conceptualise interviewees’ accounts as providing insight
into their experiences and how they made sense of them. As
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)

our analysis came to focus on interviewees’ accounts of iden-
tity performance, we adopted a form of thematic analysis
(Braun & Clarke, 2006) guided by SCT’s conceptualisation
of identity performance (Klein et al., 2007). This involved
identifying participants’ references to the purposive communi-
cation of their religious, national and gender identities. These
references formed the core material for subsequent analysis.
This involved comparing them against each other in an
iterative process (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to identify the
various ways in which hijab featured in identity performances.
As far as possible, we kept to the explicit meaning that our
participants gave the experience (Boyatzis, 1998).
The sample is unrepresentative (in terms of class,
education, etc.), and we make no empirical generalizations
from this sample to other British Muslim women. Nor indeed
do we attempt to describe the identity performances of the
‘typical’ interviewee. Rather, we seek to show the range of
ways in which participants referred to performance-related
considerations when discussing their behaviour. Through
doing so, we hope to extend our understanding of the issues
theories of identity performance could address. In turn, a key
criterion in judging our analysis is how it challenges/extends
initial assumptions about identity performances (see Stiles,
1999, for a discussion of ‘reflexive validity’ as a criterion for
judging the utility of qualitative analyses).
Following Elliott, Fischer, and Rennie’s (1999) advice on
how to ensure quality in qualitative research, our analysis is
grounded in multiple examples. In the following extracts,
excluded material is denoted by square brackets [ ]. Where
words are added to aid comprehension, these appear inside
such brackets. To preserve anonymity, interviewees are identi-
fied by a number (with a letter ‘h’ denoting if they routinely
wore hijab). Those participating in group interviewees are
identified by an additional letter (‘g’).
Our analysis starts with participants’ understandings of
the role of hijab in making visible their Muslim identity.
Next, we consider their accounts of the implications of this
visibility for the performance of their national and gender
identities and finally for the performance of their own
Muslim identities.
ANALYSIS
Hijab as an Identity-Consolidating Performance
Several participants described adopting hijab so as to make their
Muslim identity visible. One interviewee (11hg) described how
her decision to adopt hijab was prompted (in part at least) by the
desire to let others know she was Muslim. Referring to the
surprise others exhibited on learning this (‘people say “Oh”’),
she explained ‘obviously there’s loads of reasons as to what
the hijab sort of signifies and stuff like that, but the identity as
well, like you’re showing that “I am Muslim”’.
In similar vein, another (2h), explained:
Extract 1
I think the reason for me wanting to [wear hijab] was
because of identity and like I’d get people asking me, ‘oh
are you Muslim?’ or whatever because without a headscarf
you’re not that distinctly pin-pointed as to Muslim. I used
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hijab and the performance of identity 441
to get offended by that sometimes or not even offended it
would make me think ‘no, that’s what I am, I want to look
like one in a way’ so that’s what made me, don’t know, I
guess maybe I wanted to make a statement.
Sometimes, respondents explained that hijab-wearing was
important in relation to particular audiences. For example,
some referred to the psychological significance of visibility
to a Muslim audience, and of how their hijab-wearing was
motivated by the desire for such visibility. Thus, one (22h)
explained that when wearing hijab, other Muslims (whom
she did not personally know) would greet her (such that non-
Muslim friends asked with amazement, ‘Do you know all of
these people?’). She continued such recognition was partic-
ularly pleasurable because Islamic teaching emphasised that
Muslims constituted a community and that such recognition
confirmed one’s group membership: as she put it, Islamic teach-
ing decreed ‘every Muslim is a brother or sister to each other, so
I suppose it’s a sense of belonging’. Another (6h) was more
explicit on the significance of such recognition. Referring to
when she had not worn hijab, she explained:
Extract 2
6h It really irritated me when I walked down the street,
like we’ve got a greeting, you know, you’ve proba-
bly heard it, we say ‘as-salamu alaykum’, ‘peace
be upon you’, and you’re supposed to say that when
you see another Muslim. It used to really irritate me
when I used to walk down the street and I’d see like a
woman wearing a headscarf and she wouldn’t know
like if I was a Muslim or not, ’cause I didn’t [wear a
headscarf]. And that used to hurt.
I Because?
6h I wanted to be recognised as a Muslim.
Here, it is apparent that although subjectively identified as
Muslim, without co-religionists orienting to her as one, her own
sense of being Muslim was incomplete. Moreover, there is a sense
in which her experience of her identity depended on others’ acts
of recognition, which were only possible because of her hijab.
That is, her subjective experience of ‘having’ a Muslim identity
is (in part) contingent upon a performance which invites others
to treat her as having that identity (through issuing the norma-
tively defined identity-related greeting—‘salaam’).
It is also noteworthy that some reported being vulnerable to
various mis-categorisations (e.g. as ‘foreign’) and that there
was pleasure to be found in publically asserting a category
membership that one saw as self-relevant. For example, the
woman cited earlier (6h) self-categorised as Scottish but
explained that as her parents were from the Middle East and
Pakistan found herself routinely mis-categorised as foreign.
She explained how this was aversive to her because
Extract 3
I regard myself as a Scottish Muslim [ ] I’m not Middle
Eastern, I don’t speak the language. I’m not Pakistani, I
don’t speak the language. I don’t know anything about
the culture. I’ve been brought up in this culture all my life.
She then explained how, given the potential for such mis-
categorisations, wearing hijab allowed her to exert some control
over her categorisation:
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)
442 Nick Hopkins and Ronni Michelle Greenwood
Extract 4
People are going to judge you no matter what. I mean,
when I was at high school it was ‘oh it’s the Asian one,
it’s the Asian girl’, you know, ‘the Pakistani girl’, ‘the
half-Arab girl’. But I’d rather, you know, I was judged on
the basis that I was a Muslim more than anything.
Here, hijab is clearly implicated in asserting her Muslimness and
in asserting this over the alternatives (‘half-Arab’ and ‘Pakistani’)
assumed by others. In other words, there is a sense in which
her hijab-wearing is a performance organised to align others’
categorisation of her with her own self-categorisation.
Other interviewees also described how making their
Muslim identity visible to others could be experienced as
identity confirming. However, these accounts highlighted
rather different dynamics. For example, one interviewee (5h)
explained how the process of making her Muslim identity
visible tested, and thus attested to, her identity commitments.
She explained that with hijab ‘you know you’re gonna stick
out like anything’ and that ‘sometimes I feel like I’m an easy
target now as well ’cause I’m openly declaring what my faith
[is]’. However, she continued:
Extract 5
I felt very proud of making my identity known as a Muslim,
and it just, it made me stronger as well, like you know, I felt
like it didn’t matter what people thought. I was really
confident and comfortable with myself. [ ] I’m an easy target
for someone, but again it doesn’t stop me.
Although she reported that her visibility entails risk (‘I’m
an easy target’), there is a sense in which others’ unpredictable
and potentially negative reactions contribute to the meaning
and experience of her identity. That is, the performative com-
munication of her identity to a potentially hostile audience
seems psychologically significant because it tests and confirms
her self-conceptualisation as a Muslim. Indeed, she reports the
public declaration of her identity before a potentially hostile
audience, resulted in her feeling ‘stronger’, ‘confident’ and
‘comfortable with myself’.
In this section, we have considered accounts of how wearing
hijab could be bound up with wishing to make one’s Muslim
identity visible and how this visibility could be associated
with ambitions to exert control over one’s categorisation. We
have also considered the diverse ways in which this could
be experienced as consolidating and affirming one’s self-
categorisation. In the next section, we consider participants’
beliefs about how wearing hijab affected others’ perceptions
of Muslim women’s national and gender identities and how
such meta-perceptions shaped participants’ performance of
these identifications.
Performing National and Gender Identities
If wearing hijab secures one’s categorisation as a Muslim, it
can also make one vulnerable to Islamophobic mis-
categorisations—for example, as someone who supported ter-
rorism. Sometimes, such mis-categorisations (often conveyed in
offensive ‘jokes’) elicited sharp responses—as when one (20h)
explained she sometimes responded ‘you should see the Kalash-
nikov’ she had concealed under her coat. Sometimes, such mis-
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
categorisations (e.g. as ‘foreign national’ or as an ‘oppressed
woman’) were anticipated, and participants reported tailoring
their identity performances so as to disconfirm them. We consider
these examples in turn.
National Identity
Several observed how wearing hijab rendered a woman
vulnerable to being mis-categorised as foreign. Indeed, one
(5h) explained she found herself looking at her hijab and
loose-fitting jackets/skirts through the eyes of others and antic-
ipating others’ categorisation of her as ‘Arab’:
Extract 6
I sometimes look in the mirror and I don’t even recognise
myself. Yeah I do! Sometimes I’ve seen my clothes and
I’m like ‘oh my God who’s that?’ you know [ ] and I just
look at myself and I can’t look ’cause I think I look like
an Arab. But I’m not an Arab. You know what people
say—the usual sort of thing.
Mindful of such concerns, several reported the pleasure
obtained in expressing their Scottish/British identity. One
(22h) explained she believed that on seeing her hijab with its
non-Western connotations, non-Muslim others would wonder
‘Does she speak English? [ ] Sometimes I think that just
because I dress non-Western that maybe people think I don’t
know about Western ways of living whatever’. In turn, she
described the pleasure of speaking with a Glaswegian accent,
thereby displaying her Scottishness.
Pursuing such themes, others reported that their clothing
signalled their national (British/Scottish) belonging. One
(11hg) explained ‘we’re Scottish Muslim, we’re not Pakistani
Muslim so we don’t, like maybe my parents, my mum, like our
mums would wear salwar kameez’, with another participant
in the same group interview (12hg) adding ‘I don’t ever wear
that, I would never wear it in public’. Another referred to her
wearing of jeans and denim jackets as performing a British
Muslim woman’s identity. Pointing to her own denim clothing,
she (17h) reported a non-Muslim friend’s feedback:
Extract 7
And my friend, actually, she goes, you know, ‘I love this
urban Muslim female look because you are marrying the
British-ness with your Islamic-ness.’ You know, as a
Muslim woman I dress in a certain way. How do I marry
that with fashion? And you know, she’s like, ‘I love this,
it’s so distinct.’
Others described seeking to limit the visibility of clothes
that could imply their foreignness. Thus, one (3h), speaking
of her pride in her Scottishness (‘I am Scottish and I always
will be’, ‘I’m born here, everything, lived my life here’),
explained that when wearing ‘an Asian outfit’ (e.g. salwar
kameez) to an event with her fiancé, she tried to conceal these
clothes’ public visibility:
Extract 8
like the other day I was walking with my fiancé and stuff,
and I was like ‘I feel like such a Paki’ ’cause I was wearing
an Asian outfit. And I got a big thick coat and covered
myself. And he goes ‘are you not proud to be a Paki’, I said
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)

‘no, I’m a Scottish Muslim’ and that is what I’m classed as
and that is what I’ll always be. I’m never going to refer to
myself as a Paki.
Thus far, we have considered participants’ accounts of their
awareness of their vulnerability to a mis-categorisation as
foreign (because of their hijab) and how such awareness
shaped their displays of their Scottishness/Britishness. We turn
now to how the visibility of their Muslim identity shaped their
performance of gender.
Gender Identity
As evinced in other research (see earlier), several reported adopting
hijab to manage the degree to which men (Muslim and non-
Muslim) oriented to them in terms of their physical attractiveness.
Yet several also reported that both male and female non-Muslims
judged hijab-wearing women oppressed. For example referring to
wearing hijab, one (21h) argued that non-Muslims thought that
‘even if’ Muslim women think they wear it from choice, ‘that’s
just what they think: in reality they’re conditioned’. Here, we
focus on this aspect of our participants’ identity performances—
especially those organised to disconfirm such assumptions.
For example, one (17h) reported routinely explaining ‘Yes,
I’m a Muslim. Yes, I wear a headscarf. No, I’m not oppressed’.
Another (2h) explained how her attempts to confound others’
expectations led to quite elaborate gender performances. She
explained
Extract 9
I quite enjoy surprising people [ ] they’re surprised that you
have the same views, the same feeling, the same likes, the
same dislikes, and you’re just normal, so it’s quite interesting.
I like to see people’s reactions.
When asked to illustrate this, she continued:
Extract 10
I guess it’s maybe just like fashion and clothes. People are
really surprised that I like things because I have to cover, that
‘oh she has some personality!’ or ‘she likes certain clothes!’
or ‘she’s into hair or jewellery!’ or whatever or make-up
and things like that or that I like that I’m into all that kind
of thing as well. So people are quite surprised, they think
you’re just plain and boring.
Here, the interviewee describes countering the image of
hijab-wearing women as ‘plain and boring’ with a performance
revealing ‘the same likes, the same dislikes’ (e.g. concerning
hair or jewellery) as other women. However, there is a paradox
to this performance of ordinariness: it required extraordinary
effort. For example, she explained that showing there was more
to her than observers would first assume, meant ‘you sometimes
have to rise above stereotypes and work that bit harder’, ‘you
always have to show that you’ve got an opinion even more to
show that there’s more to just being covered.’
If the preceding suggests that some performed their gender
identity so as to communicate their femininity and/or ‘personal-
ity’, others explained modifying their performance of their
Muslim identity to communicate such qualities. For example,
one (3h) explained that when she realised non-Muslims judged
her black headscarf austere and oppressive, she had concluded:
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hijab and the performance of identity 443
Extract 11
you know these people are actually looking at me and
they’re actually judging me, and I thought ‘no, I actually
want to show them that I am happy’, so one day I will stick
a pink scarf on my hair or a turquoise or anything, I just
think whether it’s bright, as long as it’s not transparent or
anything, you know now I’m actually really proud of it.
Again, this extract reveals something of the way in which
participants’ gender and religious identities intersect. Proud to
assert her Muslim identity, yet aware of others’ perceptions of
Muslim women’s oppression, this interviewee modified the
performance of her Muslim identity through wearing scarves
judged to communicate her happiness in being a Muslim
woman. Moreover, this allowed her to perform her gender iden-
tity in an Islamically acceptable manner—as long as her scarf
covered her hair she could assert a fashionable individuality.
Such sentiments were echoed by another (22h) who explained
Extract 12
I like to be colour-coded. I like to accessorise my scarf,
different colours, different textures, different materials [ ]
I make the effort, and I feel that again, this is probably
me [ ] I like to be co-ordinated [ ] it is a way of expressing
myself [ ] it is style with modesty.
In this section, we have seen something of the complexity to
the performance of multiple and intersecting identities. More-
over, we have seen something of the importance given to attend-
ing to others’ perceptions and how participants sought to control
the visibility of certain attributes, perhaps de-emphasising the
visibility of these attributes (e.g. hiding one’s ‘Asian dress’),
perhaps making visible other qualities (e.g. the possession of
opinions and personality). The result is the complex perfor-
mance of participants’ intersectional identity as Scottish/British
Muslim women in which the performance of each element is
modified by the performance of the other elements.
In the next section, we consider how participants believed
their hijab’s visibility also shaped their own performance of
their Muslim identity.
Visibility, Accountability and the Realisation of Muslim
Identity
Several reported that making one’s Muslim identity visible
through wearing hijab had implications for how one’s behav-
iour would be judged. For example, one (7h) explained that
people expected the hijab-wearing woman to be ‘perfect’:
Extract 13
when I stop and look in the mirror I think ‘what do people
see?’ They see a holy, holy person because hijab is often
associated with a nun and nuns are really, really good
people [ ] and sometimes I’ve had to say to people ‘But
I’m not perfect. You’ve got this image of me that I’m per-
fect.’ One misconception is that you put the hijab on when
you have reached perfection, but no that’s not true, we’ll
never reach perfection, we are just trying to better ourselves.
Another (9), who did not wear hijab regularly (but aspired
to do so), explained that if hijab-wearing women failed to
enact the ideals associated with Islam ‘it kind of gives us
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)
444 Nick Hopkins and Ronni Michelle Greenwood
[Muslims] a bad image’. Indeed, she continued that, as she felt
she could fail in this regard, she was delaying wearing it. As
she explained
Extract 14
I don’t want to wear [hijab] and people assume ‘Oh, she
must do all this’ ’cause some people think well you must
pray five times a day, and I’ll say well actually I don’t [ ]
but hopefully in the future, once I’ve kind of, once I’m
doing everything right [I will wear hijab].
Yet if these two interviewees reported concerns about being
visibly Muslim and failing to live up to the ideal associated
with this identity, others explained that such concerns could
motivate them to realise a stronger performance of their
Muslim identity. One (6h) put it thus:
Extract 15
with wearing a headscarf, you know, there comes loads of
things. You have to watch your etiquette because when
people see you, when you walk down the street, people
know that you’re a Muslim, you know [ ] you have to be
careful of your etiquette, ’cause people see you and you’re,
you’re like an ambassador for Islam, for your religion and
that’s really important.
Here, there is a richly reflexive account of how she believed
her visibility positioned her as an ‘ambassador for Islam’ and
how this encouraged her to behave appropriately. She explained
the hijab’s visibility made her feel accountable for her behav-
iour, that this accountability was in relation to her Muslim
identity and that this motivated a performance that better realised
Muslim identity. Moreover, this was experienced positively and
as identity-affirming. For example, she argued that her attention
to ‘etiquette’—such as the simple act of smiling to non-Muslim
audiences—realised her duty as a Muslim to educate others
about Islam. Thus, she continued that through such courtesies
‘you’re educating people about Islam’ and
Extract 16
if you’re standing at a bus stop and someone, someone sees
me wearing the hijab and you just smile at them, that can be
the first impression they get of Islam, that could be the first
and last impression they get.
Moreover, such behaviour did not simply entail the public
expression of pre-existing qualities. Rather, it entailed an on-
going struggle within oneself to develop those positive
qualities. Indeed, she explained that such visibility encouraged
the project of ‘perfecting, perfecting yourself, perfecting your
Islam so people can see’ what Islam is. Thus, although
orienting to others’ judgements could in some ways be
onerous, it also could be experienced positively, and as moti-
vating efforts to improve oneself as a Muslim.
The idea that the hijab’s visibility facilitated the performance
of identity-related qualities was echoed by others. One
interviewee (18h) considered the difficulties of negotiating
non-Muslim practices and argued that hijab encouraged her to
monitor her behaviour and so better enact her Muslim identity.
Referring to gatherings where alcohol was served, she explained
that since adopting hijab she was more aware of the need to
avoid identity-inappropriate settings than when uncovered (after
‘wearing the hijab I was more conscious of that. Before that I
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
didn’t really think twice’). Another (2h) explained that when
starting University, she faced many tempting options: ‘I felt like
I was missing out on something. What is this like? What is this?
I’ve never experienced this—how do I know this isn’t what I
could be into?’ Yet, though sorely tempted (‘I did, I did want
to go, I did want to see’), she argued her hijab
Extract 17
made me think twice when I did start Uni. Because I did
cover and I did look like the conventional Muslim, so that’s
what made me think. Otherwise there wouldn’t really be
any barriers stopping me.
Explaining the hijab’s significance, she continued:
Extract 18
I did feel that I was representing Islam, so I did feel like I
was really presenting something, and I felt like that was
my belief and that’s who I am and that’s why I started wear-
ing, like why I started covering. So for me it was, that’s what
really made me stop and think. Maybe if I hadn’t covered and
I had come to Uni and then there was so many decisions - do I
cover? Do I do this? Do I go? It would have been a lot harder.
Again, there is a sense in which she believed her visibility
as a Muslim rendered her accountable as a Muslim, which in
turn encouraged an identity performance that allowed her to
better realise her Muslim identity.
Elaborating on the dynamics behind such identity-realising
performances, some implied hijab allowed them to manage
others’ invitations to join in identity-inappropriate activities
(e.g. meeting in a bar). Thus, one (22h) explained her hijab com-
municates ‘I am a Muslim and that’s not my kind of thing’.
Moreover, she explained that without hijab, non-Muslim friends
could reasonably expect her to be flexible on (and invite her to
participate in) any number of behaviours (e.g. drinking alcohol):
Extract 19
I feel that if I wasn’t wearing it then I’d be open to criti-
cism. If, wearing the headscarf is compulsory and you don’t
do it, then drinking is, you’re not supposed to drink [so
people could say] ‘Just have a sip you know. Take some’.
So I suppose if you can be lenient that way, why can’t
you be lenient this way?’
Here again, the interviewee reports her wearing hijab
facilitated her subsequent enactment of Islamic injunction.
Indeed, she continued that it was partly in order to manage
others’ expectations of her and her behaviour that she had
adopted hijab in her everyday life: as she put it, she had come
to conclude ‘if I call myself a Muslim I should look like one’ be-
cause it stopped others asking ‘what kind of Muslim are you?’
If the aforementioned participants highlighted the psycholog-
ical significance of a non-Muslim audience, others explained the
psychological significance of their accountability to other
Muslim women (covered or uncovered). For example, in extract
20, two interviewees discussed how wearing hijab encouraged
reflection on their behaviour:
Extract 20
14hg It’s weird how it [hijab] changes your whole you
know thinking and stuff. It’s quite good. And it’s
good in the way that you, before doing something,
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)

when you’ve got a hijab on you actually think twice
you know whereas if I didn’t wear hijab I would just
do whatever but with the hijab on it’s like you need
to think twice before you do something.
I Ok, can you say a little bit about why you have to
think twice or how that thinking. . ..
14hg Like, if I had to go out and about, if I had to go
like (unclear) you know, or go out with a bunch
of guys or something without my hijab, I’d be
like, that it doesn’t matter kind of thing. But with
my hijab, I’d be like no, you know like, you
actually do think twice about going down that line.
I So you have a sense that it would be like a
contradiction?
14hg Yeah.
I You’re doing something that is hypocritical or?
14hg Yeah, you feel then hypocritical don’t you?
15hg Yeah.
14hg So like it’s good ’cause it stops you from all that
as well.
15hg ’Cause a lot of people who don’t wear it, one of their
arguments they use ‘well I’ve seen a girl wearing
hijab doing this or that’ and you don’t want to be
one of those people who sort of puts other people off.
14hg You want to set an example for them.
Again, this reveals considerable reflection on the psycho-
logical significance of one’s visibility and on how one’s
accountability (as a Muslim) motivates an identity perfor-
mance that realises identity-related ideals (‘you don’t want to
be one of those people who sort of puts other people off’). It
is also noteworthy that the two interviewees’ contributions
(in this group interview) corroborate this account.
In this section, we have seen a two-way relationship
between identity and practice. If wearing hijab can be a perfor-
mative act to communicate identity (section 1), the data
reviewed here show participants reflected on this visibility
and their accountability as Muslims and how this could
motivate an identity performance in which they sought to
realise identity-related virtues. Moreover, this visibility and
accountability (and its effects upon their behaviour) could be
welcomed (with some participants reporting adopting hijab
for such very reasons).
DISCUSSION
Reviewing this material, it is important to recognise how our
commitment to SCT’s theorisation of identity (Turner et al.,
1987) and identity performance (Klein et al., 2007) shaped
our approach to these data. Other conceptualisations of
identity (Widdicombe, 1998) would draw attention to different
features of our interviewees’ talk (e.g. the interactional
business being attended to in the interview itself) and result
in different analytic claims. However, some alternative
analyses could complement our own. For example, analysing
accounts of English national identity, Condor (2006, 2011)
explored her English interviewees’ various interactional
concerns. Yet the resulting analysis provides insights into the
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hijab and the performance of identity 445
everyday concerns and dilemmas associated with ‘Englishness’
and what this identification entails. In similar vein, much could
be gained through exploring how our interviewees performed
their religious, national and gender identities in the interview
itself. This could entail noting how their talk of their identity
as British Muslim women orients to the assumption that hijab
signalled Islamist threat, national dis-identification, gender
oppression, and so on.
However, such complementary analyses are for the future.
For the present, we consider how our work elaborates on the
observation that clothes ‘transform flesh into something
recognizable’ (Entwistle, 2000, p. 323) and communicate our
identities (O’Neil, 2000). Specifically, we consider what our
participants’ accounts of their clothing decisions bring to
SCT-inspired analyses of social identity performance (Klein
et al., 2007).
We saw that wearing hijab could reflect an attempt to
control one’s categorisation by others such that it accorded
more closely with one’s self-categorisation. This observation
echoes (experimental) research that shows that being treated
by others in terms of a category that is discrepant with one’s
own self-conception is aversive (Barreto & Ellemers, 2003;
Barreto, Ellemers, Scholten, & Smith, 2010). It also echoes
insights from ‘self-verification theory’ (Swann, 1987), which ar-
gues that people are motivated to sustain their self-conceptions
(including group identifications: Chen, Chen, & Shaw, 2004)
and that they use social interactions to elicit self-confirming
feedback. The point we would make here is that our participants’
accounts emphasise the psychological significance of such feed-
back. SCT focuses on cognitive self-definition, and this has
much to recommend it. Yet through drawing attention to the
ubiquity of identity-consolidating performances, our data imply
that there is more to the subjective experience of identity than
self-categorisation. Indeed, these data suggest there may be
merit in re-visiting social anthropological (e.g. Barth, 1969)
and sociological (e.g. Goffman, 1969) analyses of identity.
These argue that if we are to speak of a person as ‘having an
identity’ it is important that others treat that person as having that
identity (Jenkins, 1996). Such a logic implies that social identity
research could more thoroughly investigate how the experience
of an identity is bound up with the social recognition of that
identity. It also suggests that social identity research could
address the diverse ways in which group members signal their
wish to be taken as members of a particular group (rather than
another) and how others’ responses may be experienced as
consolidating one’s self-conception as a group member. As we
have seen, these responses may include the giving of an
identity-relevant salutation (e.g. as-salamu alaykum). However,
as we also saw, even the anticipation of more negative responses
can contribute to the experience of an identity-consolidating
performance (see extract 5).
Our data also speak to the behavioural complexities arising
from multiple and intersecting identifications. Typically, social
identity research has addressed this complexity through study-
ing the effect of one’s visibility to different and ‘competing’
audiences (Barreto et al., 2003). Our work extends and
complements this through considering how the practice of
any one identity (e.g. gender) is affected by the other identities
(religious, national, etc.) one claims (an issue of critical con-
cern in contemporary feminist social psychological theory:
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 43, 438–447 (2013)
446 Nick Hopkins and Ronni Michelle Greenwood
Greenwood, 2012; Shields, 2008; Wiley & Deaux, 2011). For
example, our data show that the performance of participants’
gender and national identifications could be shaped by their an-
ticipation of others’ misconceptions of their hijab-wearing (e.g.
as signalling gender oppression or national dis-identification).
However, more research on such performances is needed.
For example, we do not always know whether they were
organised to shape the observing audience’s views of the
group as a whole (‘us as British Muslim women’) or to impact
others’ views of themselves as individuals (e.g. through
avoiding the personal applicability of a negative stereotype:
Wakefield et al., 2012). Amongst our own data, there are hints
at both. For example, extract 15 seems to hint at a performance
on behalf of the group as a whole, whereas extract 11 seems to
hint at a performance geared more to avoiding the personal
applicability of a negative stereotype. Future work could more
directly explore these different performances. Research could
also consider the contexts in which different gender perfor-
mances arise. Experimental research shows that women
anticipating a sexist evaluation present themselves in non-
traditional terms (Kaiser & Miller, 2001). Our own data hint
at the work involved in such performances. However, they
also suggest that Muslim women may, because of the diverse
stereotypes they face, perform gender in complex ways,
sometimes presenting themselves as conventionally feminine
(e.g. as interested in hair and jewellery) and sometimes as less
so (e.g. as opinionated). Such complexities highlight the need
for future research to address the diverse ways in which the
performance of gender is shaped by the audience’s assump-
tions about the other identities a woman may claim (in this
case, her religious identity).
Finally, our analysis illustrates how the decision to make
one’s identity visible (itself an identity performance) can be
consequential for one’s awareness of oneself as a group
representative and how this can, in turn, motivate identity
performances in which one’s behaviour more closely
conforms to identity-related ideals. Such data highlight the
two-way relationship between identity and performance. Just
as concerns to consolidate an identification may motivate
particular identity performances (e.g. wearing hijab), so too
such performances may affect the subjective experience of that
identity (such that one feels oneself to be an ambassador for
one’s group) and one’s subsequent performance of that iden-
tity. Indeed, what is striking is that some reported adopting
hijab for this very reason. That is, hijab was sometimes
adopted because it was understood as increasing one’s
accountability as a Muslim and thus as encouraging perfor-
mances that better realised Islamic injunctions on everyday
behaviour. This not only adds insight into the diverse motiva-
tions for making an identity visible (Klein et al., 2007) but also
draws attention to the complex reflexivity that can be involved
in identity performances. Moreover, these observations sug-
gest how clothing can be psychologically significant. It has
long been assumed that an individual’s outward appearance
can be consequential for their feelings, and this assumption
is well illustrated in the fact that organisations of all sorts often
seek to regulate group members’ behaviour through regulating
their dress (O’Neil, 2000). Moreover, some work considers how
clothing may facilitate the performance of professional identi-
ties. For example, Rafaeli, Dutton, Harquail, and Lewis (1997)
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
explored how female office workers adopt certain clothing to
limit the degree to which others view them in terms of work-
irrelevant identities (e.g. as a mother or sexual being). What is
particularly interesting about our data is that they suggest that
individuals’ clothing decisions may sometimes be bound up
with their concerns to regulate their own behaviour.
As explained earlier, experimentation is ideal for address-
ing many aspects of identity performance. However, the social
identity concept of performance implies that individuals have
a reflexive awareness of how they could be viewed by others
and how they orient to others’ perceptions of them. We believe
that the analyses offered here show that there is much to be
gained through considering such understandings. Moreover,
given the social significance of Islamophobic perceptions of
hijab (Williamson & Khiabany, 2010), the gains are both
theoretically and socially relevant.
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