In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of 'conspicuous signs' of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. This book argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. "Scott unfolds excellent and detailed analyses of the construction of the citizen in the French nation state, of French racism and Algeria, and of the prominent news events in the French veiling controversy."---Virginia Corvid, Feminist Collections