“About the hijab, it is how I am”: borderland living experienced by Norwegian Muslim hijabi women

This article examines how Norwegian Muslim hijabi women experience racialization in public space, using a mixed-method dataset to explore religious embodiment as a site of negotiation, exclusion, and belonging. It theorizes hijabi embodiment as borderland embodiment, arguing for a corporeal conceptualization of the hijab to move beyond reductive binaries embedded in racist and Islamophobic imaginaries. The analysis shows how religion functions as a racial signifier in Norway, where race is often obscured or denied. Synthesizing Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of the borderlands and Sara Ahmed's queer phenomenology, I analyze participants' experiences as simultaneously embodied, spatial, and relational. This approach foregrounds how religio-racial difference is produced, felt, and resisted in everyday encounters, situating the hijab not merely as a religious symbol but as a racialized extension of the body.