The Politics of Face Coverings and Masks in Russia, France, and Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since 2004, governments in a number of countries have initiated tense political debates over the question of whether religious symbols should be permitted in public places. Frequently, such debates have focussed on the head and face coverings worn by many observant Muslim women, as has been explored by a rich scholarly literature. However, relatively little has been written about the specific reasons why these laws have been adopted, and few cross-national comparisons have been made. This paper will examine the following cases: first, the law against wearing face coverings in France, adopted during Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in 2010; and second, the extensive debates about access to government services for people wearing religious clothing in Québèc (Canada). Finally, the paper will examine the distinct case of Russia, where high court decisions have revealed a reversal in the authorities’ former tolerance of the wearing of head coverings in public places. Three variables help to explain why these laws came upon the political agenda in these admittedly very different countries. First, all three adopted previous measures to limit citizens’ ability to don face coverings during political protests; second, these countries’ choices influenced each other, showing the importance that global influences can play in policy formation; and finally, political leaders attempted to use laws on face and head coverings as a strategy to reinforce their power. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v9i2.230
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".