How Violence Against Women is Addressed in Social and Public Action for ‘Women in Immigrant Communities’: Mixed Standards and a Logic of Suspicion

The continuing invisibility¹ of women in immigration, both in research and in political preoccupations, has been deplored for more than 20 years (Morokvasic 1976; 2008). Now, however, the question of ‘women in immigrant communities’² has acquired a high profile in the French media and politics as a ‘public issue’ in its own right. The question of ‘women in immigrant communities’ has mainly arisen in debates over the wearing of headscarves and measures taken in that connection (the first ‘headscarf affair’ in Creil in 1989, the secularity law of 2004), polygamy (1991) and, since 2000, forced marriages, violence against and social