1 Introduction

In this chapter, we are extending the meaning of the notion of intersectional bordering, as coined by Cassidy et al. (2018), whereby discourses and practices that marginalize migrants intersect with those targeting gender and LGBTQIA+ rights. Notably, although conservative and far-right political factions predominantly leverage traditional female gender roles within their anti-immigration rhetoric, our chapter illuminates how a discourse advocating for gender equality can serve the same anti-migrant purpose. Specifically, we offer a social-psychological perspective on this phenomenon.

In October 2010, a woman went on trial on the accusation that she attacked and teared a niqab off the face of a Middle-Eastern woman in Paris. At the time, the niqab was still legal in France. The attacker explained her anger and her behavior by her motivation to defend women’s rights. More recently, in November 2019, at the march against sexist and sexual violence in Paris, a group of women from the Nemésis collective attracted the attention of the media with such slogans as ‘foreign rapists are still there’ or ‘52% of rapes in the Paris region are committed by foreigners’ (Le Parisien, 2019). This collective supposedly aims to ‘denounce the dangerous impact of mass immigration on Western women’ (Collectif Nemésis, 2019) and imputes a direct link between immigration and sexual aggressions and violation of women’s rights. This group claims to be feminist, apolitical, and denies being racist. Nevertheless, they were excluded from the feminist demonstration that day (Le Parisien, 2019). This collective openly targets migration policies and immigrants as the key problems in women’s oppression. Much like these individuals, across different European countries, examples abound of citizens, journalists, or politicians drawing on gender-friendly arguments to support their anti-immigration stances. Research carried out in the US shows that outgroup males are perceived as a sexual threat in comparison to ingroup males (Navarrete et al., 2010). In a series of experiment conducted in Belgium, Kuppens and Yzerbyt (2012) found that young women reported feeling more anger, fear, and disgust toward Muslims when their identity as women had been made salient (i.e., by asking how much they identified with women), in comparison with various control conditions where their identity as young adults, as social sciences students, their personal identity, or no identity had been made salient. In the US, Islam was found to be perceived as distinctly threatening when it comes to gender rights, especially in comparison with other religions. Interestingly, this perception is associated with higher levels of prejudice against Muslims (Moss et al., 2019). According to Howard (2012, p.148), ‘this argument that (Islamic) veils go against equality of the sexes and, thus, against one of the fundamental values of Western states, is probably the most widely used – not only by politicians, but also by the media and in general popular discussion – to defend bans on hijabs, burqas and/or niqabs’.

It will not come as a surprise, that this association between immigration and the issue of women’s rights penetrates political speeches. Leaders have recognized the potential of such rhetoric and are making use of it to further their own political agenda. During the 2017 French presidential campaign, one of Marine Le Pen’s policies was to ‘fight against Islamism which reduces women’s fundamental rights’ (Rassemblement National, 2016). This may sound paradoxical when Front National representatives are predominantly voting against policies that would favor gender equality. In Italy, Matteo Salvini stated in an interview ‘In the literal interpretation of the Koran (..), women are worth less that men and Islamic law is worth more than Italian law. And therefore, I don’t want people who believe women are worth less than men to come to Italy’ (ANSA, 2018). Remarkably, his party wants to revive old-fashioned gender roles and supports the ultra-conservative International Conference of the World Congress of Families, a coalition that promotes anti-abortion positions and opposes same-sex marriage. Similarly, the far-right Partij voor de Vrijheid, led by Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, displays a file named ‘violence against women in Islam’ (Van Klaveren & Wilders, 2013). In Belgium, Theo Francken, the former Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, and a member of the Flemish nationalist (albeit not extreme-right) party ‘N-VA’, declared that the 2020-elected female mayor of Molenbeek was not welcomed by women because ‘they all had to stay at home’ (Le Soir, 2018). He was accused by feminists who claimed that ‘women will not be an excuse for racism’ (RTBF, 2016). This use of feminist discourse for nationalistic purposes is hardly new. As Lyons (2014) suggests, the strategic use of European feminism amongst British colonial administrators helped supporting colonial policies.

As is apparent in the other chapters of this volume, and also worth noting, this link between gender and immigration discourses takes various forms across European countries. While in some European countries, migrants are portrayed as a group threatening a liberal and emancipated vision of women, in others, these migrants are construed as threatening the willingness to go back to traditional family relations and gender roles, or as threatening to women whom men should protect (see, e.g. Akkerman, 2015; Köttig et al., 2017). In both cases, one witnesses the construction of a symbolic border between them and us, an othering/bordering (Said, 1978), on the basis of gender issues, in a form of intersectional bordering.

How is it possible that people use an anti-sexist (or feminist) discourse and, at the same time, express anti-egalitarian attitudes towards immigrants? By perceiving—or constructing—Islam as a sexist, paternalistic religion, anti-immigration politicians simultaneously endorse feminist ideologyFootnote 1 in one of its guises and serve their agenda. This process of ‘othering’ emerges in the political discourse, but is also received and reproduced by the audience. Clearly, a fascinating question thus concerns the mechanisms that may be at work at the psychological level to account for this posture not so much among political leaders but, more importantly so, among the population. Can social psychology shed light on this issue? In this chapter, we consider a series of social psychological perspectives developed to address this paradox. In particular, we focus on the concept of ‘malleability of ideologies’, first introduced by Knowles et al. (2009) in order to understand how one can weaponize an egalitarian ideology to serve an anti-immigration agenda. Indeed, an intriguing possibility is that egalitarian ideologies, and more specifically, anti-sexism, can serve the purpose of providing people the necessary justification for expressing prejudice.Footnote 2

1.1 From Blatant Racism to Malleable Ideologies

Over the course of a century, blatant expressions of prejudice have decreased dramatically in the USA (Whitley & Kite, 2013). In Europe too, although we are not aware of any empirical study conducted to monitor the changes of stereotypes across the century, a cursory look at the evolution since World War II reveals the growing emergence of norms against blatant prejudice, most clearly materialized in anti-discrimination laws (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995; Zick et al., 2008). Despite the fact that the last 20 years witnessed an escalation of hate crimes against Muslims, a rise of Far-Right Anti-Immigration Parties since the 1980 (Pettigrew, 1998; Jackson et al., 2001; Mudde, 2013), prejudice continues to be largely perceived as politically incorrect, if not immoral. Research indicates that most people wish to regulate their expression of prejudice and experience a negative self-directed affect when they are reminded of a prejudiced behavior they showed in the past (Monteith et al., 2010). Indeed, manifestations of racism or sexism not only come across as problematic but they are also illegal. At the same time, it is obvious that bigotry is far from having disappeared. Rooted in centuries of cultural and individual representations that impinge on everyday habits, racism and sexism perpetuate through a host of factors that reside in structural relations as well as psychological biases.

To address this surprising discrepancy between the public condemnation of prejudiced opinions and discriminatory behavior and the perpetuation of racist views, social psychologists have called upon the notion of modern racism (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000; Henry & Sears, 2002; McConahay, 1986). Modern racism is a recent form of racism that replaces blatant racism. Old-fashioned, blatant racism is expressed directly and includes a bare and open rejection of minorities, based on alleged biological differences (e.g. ‘Black people are generally not as smart as whites’). It implies that Whites are inherently superior to other races, and that it is legitimate to use political and social power to keep minorities at bay and protect white people (Whitley & Kite, 2013). In contrast, modern racism is the result of a significant shift in social norms. Because stereotypes and racism persist in the culture and current system, individuals continue to be exposed to them on a daily basis. At the same time, people are often unaware of this, and (like to) think that they are devoid of bias (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), seeing that racism is considered as immoral. Modern racism offers more socially acceptable forms of racial prejudice by upholding such beliefs as the idea that racism no longer exists today (the problem was solved thanks to legislation), that minorities are accountable for their undesirable social situation, and that minorities are too demanding in their push for equal rights (McConahay et al., 1981). Thus, according to researchers working on modern racism, many people claiming to support egalitarian principles and values, and thinking of themselves as non-prejudiced, continue to harbor negative feelings and beliefs about historically disadvantaged and otherwise stigmatized groups.

Building on the abundant empirical work dealing with modern racism, Crandall and Eshleman (2003) suggested that people try to satisfy two competing motivations simultaneously: firstly, expressing their deeply ingrained unflattering attitudes towards outgroups; secondly, maintaining a self-image as non-prejudiced, to themselves and to others. In order to resolve this dilemma, prejudiced people are more likely to express prejudice or to discriminate outgroup members when they can legitimize their attitudes in ways that seem socially acceptable. Whether it concerns their behavior, their opinions, or at a more elaborate level, their worldviews and ideologies, many prejudiced people are therefore likely to experience some level of discomfort when expressing anti-egalitarian stances. As a consequence, they will only do so when they can provide a convincing justification for their behavior.

An experiment by Snyder et al. (1979) illustrates this mechanism in relation to the discrimination of disabled people. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the first condition, participants were informed that their task was to watch and evaluate a short movie. They had to do so in company of another person and, to this end, had to choose between one of two alleged participants (actually, two confederates), one of whom was a disabled person. Interestingly, in the condition in which participants were told that both would see the same film, participants decided to sit next to the disabled person about as often as they selected the other person. In sharp contrast, when participants thought that the two movies would be different, they opted for the disabled person significantly less than for the other person. Additional findings suggest that these results emerge because the participants could use the justification of the film to avoid sitting next to the disabled person. In other words, participants discriminated against the disabled person, but only when they could identify an acceptable reason to do so, that is, when the situation was sufficiently ambiguous to avoid exposing the prejudice driving their behavior.

Besides physical behavior, discourse can also be adapted to justify one’s prejudice. As a case in point, Sindic et al. (2018) found that participants who are motivated to justify their stance on immigration in front of an audience modify the content of stereotypes about immigrants. To show this, the authors focused on the contradiction residing in the anti-immigrant discourse: host populations blame immigrants for taking away jobs as well as for being lazy and taking advantage of the health care benefits. Exploring what the authors call a ‘politicized use of immigrant stereotypes’, they show that stereotypes can be shaped in a strategic manner to mobilize the audience and reach political goals (e.g. convince an audience with respect to immigration restrictions).

In their experiment, Sindic et al. (2018) made salient the fact that immigrants were a threat for either job availability (‘job availability condition’) or for social security resources (‘social security threat’) and measured participants’ support for immigration restrictions. They then provided half of the participants with the opportunity to express their arguments about immigration and mobilize an audience, whereas the other half did not have this opportunity. Finally, participants had to evaluate immigrants on a series of stereotypical traits. The results show that participants who favored more stringent immigration policies changed the content of the stereotypes that they expressed as a function of their experimental condition. Indeed, anti-immigration participants in the ‘social security threat’ condition described immigrants as less hardworking when they faced an audience than whey they did not, thereby justifying the threat immigrants presumably pose for social security. In contrast, participants who opposed greater restrictions of immigration depicted immigrants as more hardworking when they faced an audience than when they did not. In the ‘job availability threat’ condition, the opposite pattern emerged. Specifically, participants who favored increased restrictions on immigration described the immigrants as more hardworking when they faced an audience than to when they did not. Conversely, participants who opposed increased restrictions on immigration described immigrants as less hardworking when facing an audience than whey they did not. In conclusion, participants who had the opportunity to mobilize an audience promoted a psychological representation of immigrants compatible with their political views and goals.

In an attempt to understand the psychological mechanisms at work behind the expression of subtle discriminatory behavior, Delroisse et al. (2012) examined whether people justified their decision by selecting specific information to make their decision. The authors suggested that, when individuals end up manifesting discrimination, they not only use information that is relevant to the situation of interest, but also ‘neutral’ information, i.e., information that is not or only slightly relevant to the decision-making process. These authors looked at the hiring situation, a situation known to allow for discrimination against minority groups. Their findings suggest that the person evaluating a résumé first looks to see whether the relevant information (education, job experience) favors their preferred group. If not, they turn to less relevant information (hobbies, interests) to defend the exclusion of a candidate from the stigmatized group, at least as long as this information can be shaped convincingly enough to come across as unbiased evidence. In a similar vein, White and Crandall (2023 show that authenticity serves as a justification for prejudice: participants with higher levels of prejudice tended to label others’ expressions of prejudice as authentic whenever they agreed with it.

Going a step further, Knowles et al. (2009) propose that participants not only adapt their behavior or their discourse to serve their goals but also assert different ideological positions. This major theoretical development holds that ideologies are less fixed than generally assumed. Rather, people alter their ideological beliefs depending on the situation they face and their current motivations. Building on the work on modern racism (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000; Henry & Sears, 2002), they suggest that, next to capitalizing on situational ambiguity, individuals can also take advantage of ambiguity in ideologies. For instance, diversity, which refers to heterogeneity in groups, can be construed in terms of race, age or gender, or other categories (Unzueta et al., 2012). According to these authors, the concept of ‘malleability of ideologies’ refers to the fact that people endorse ideologies in ways that benefit their personal (or own group) situation in order to achieve three goals. First, to appear non-prejudiced in their own eyes. Indeed, several studies show that people are aware of their struggle to be non-prejudiced (Devine et al., 1991; Plant & Devine, 1998) and are sometimes internally motivated to act in a non-prejudiced way and consciously commit to do so, although such self-regulation is costly (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003; Devine & Monteith, 1993). Second, malleable ideologies can allow one to appear unprejudiced in other people’s eyes, serving self-presentation goals. Social psychology work has been able to uncover and measure the extrinsic desire of individuals to present themselves as unbiased, and researchers developed several techniques to bypass participant’s strategic effort to conceal their prejudice (Plant et al., 2003). Third, as illustrated by politicians, ideologies have a rallying power. Expressing how the ideology is core to a common group identity and appealing to this group ideology to reject others allows one to mobilize others in the pursuit their specific political projects (Klein et al., 2007).

All this raises the question of the genuineness of individuals who temporarily tamper ideologies to serve their goals. When juggling between different interpretations of an ideology, do individuals change their endorsement of a value knowingly? Knowles et al. (2009, p.860) suggest that individuals need to be actually convinced of the ideology to endorse it. As they put it,

It is important to note that for individuals to satisfy their intergroup motives, it is not sufficient for them merely to note the existence of a legitimizing ideology. Rather, they must also endorse it: Ideologies gain force when individuals come to believe in them.

Doing so protects the need for cognitive consistency, a concept recruited in a variety of psychological theories and referring to the fact that individuals have an inner drive to seek coherence between their attitudes and behavior (e.g., Festinger, 1957). For instance, studies show that participants will produce negative evaluations of an unknown or unfamiliar social group if they underwent earlier negative subliminal or supraliminal conditioning involving this group. Doing so allows making their description of the group congruent with their negative feelings derived from the conditioning phase (Crandall et al., 2011). At the same time, it may well be that individuals knowingly distort ideologies in pursuit of their goals. To address this question, researchers call upon various indirect measures that limit the control participants exert over their responses and offer a more truthful picture of participants’ degree of endorsement of specific viewpoints (Moors, 2016).

Having introducing the concept of malleable ideologies at a theoretical level, we next review a series of empirical efforts conducted both in the U.S. and in Europe that rely on this approach. We examine its application to different types of ideologies.

2 Empirical Demonstrations

Since its initial presentation by Knowles and colleagues, researchers relied on the concept of malleable ideologies to account for this shift of attitudes using colorblind ideology (Knowles et al., 2009), freedom of speech (White & Crandall, 2017), freedom (Verkuyten, 2013), diversity (Unzueta et al., 2012) and secularism or laïcité (Roebroeck & Guimond, 2018). Interestingly enough, these various themes do not have a fundamental ideological connection to prejudice but prejudiced individuals ‘tailor’ them in order to fit the context. This is exactly what we hypothesize is happening with anti-sexism. Before we turn to anti-sexism, however, we provide a quick overview of the empirical evidence collected on five ideologies known as colorblindness, freedom of speech, freedom, diversity, and secularism.

2.1 Colorblindness

In his 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech, Martin Luther King (2010) expressed his faith in the ideology of colorblindness. According to this ideology, people should be treated as individuals rather than as exemplars of racial categories (Chow & Knowles, 2016). Not seeing a person’s race appears as a means to achieve equality. Indeed, research confirms that a colorblind ideology has positive implications with regard to reducing stereotypes and prejudice towards other groups (Wolsko et al., 2000). Still, Knowles et al. (2009) showed that this very same notion can be recruited to achieve the exact opposing result. These authors note that it is possible to construe colorblindness in terms of distributive justice (i.e. principles governing the division of outcomes across individuals and groups) or in terms of procedural justice (i.e., principles governing the process through which the distribution is decided, independently of its outcomes). Depending on how one defines colorblindness, both egalitarian and anti-egalitarian Whites may endorse it. Individuals focused on distributive justice are likely to favor differences in treatment across individuals, so long as these differences help eliminate unjust disparities in outcomes (e.g., affirmative action). In contrast, individuals focused on procedural justice are likely to favor equal treatment across individuals, even if such treatment entrenches existing inequalities.

To test this hypothesis, Knowles et al. (2009; study 3b) exposed half their north-American white participants to an ‘intergroup threat’ in order to induce the idea that the outgroup (in this case, Blacks) was in a position to harm them. To this end, participants learned that ‘contrary to popular opinion, recent research has found that affirmative action policies have resulted in fewer economic opportunities for Whites.’ Following this manipulation of intergroup threat, participants completed a questionnaire which assessed their egalitarian preferences, their views about colorblindness, and their desire for procedural justice. Results show that after the ingroup threat manipulation, participants holding egalitarian preferences did not modify their views on colorblindness. More interestingly, and in line with predictions, individuals holding anti-egalitarian preferences modified their attitudes on colorblindness in two ways. First, anti-egalitarian participants shifted their construal of colorblindness from an ideology of distributive justice to one of procedural justice. Second, their support for colorblind ideology increased, in comparison to the control condition, to the point that they endorsed it equally strongly as the egalitarian participants. Taken together, these results suggest that white people may support procedural colorblindness in order to deal with a threat to the racial hierarchy. In a nutshell, they use colorblindness as a malleable ideology. Additional evidence shows that colorblind ideology can serve to deprioritize racial discourse and racial agenda setting. Indeed, Chow and Knowles (2016) found that anti-egalitarian participants used this ideology to justify their refusal to add race as a topic the 2016 U.S. presidential debate. This quote by Martin Luther King, in his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ written in 1964, (pp. 84–109, 2010) is eloquent in this regard:

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.

It is worth noting, however, that these results did not replicate in a European replication attempt. In their 2018 study, Roebroeck and Guimond tested the hypothesis of the malleable colorblind ideology in France. Republicanism, the core French principle, asserts that the citizen constitutes the very basis of the republic, which does not recognize group memberships (whether based on race, religion or others), and thus parallels the colorblind ideology. In three studies, the authors failed to find support for a malleability of colorblindness in France. As we will see below, however, they were able to show that a similar pattern was at work with the more specific ideology of laïcité (secularism).

2.2 Freedom of Speech

The US stands as a culture that prides itself on its profound appreciation of speech rights. At the same time, numerous controversies arise from the tension between the desire to ensure freedom of speech and the desire to restrict offensive views (Washington Post, 2022). White and Crandall (2017) examined whether prejudiced people would strategically use freedom of speech as a justification for, or in defense against, punishments for racism addressed to someone else. In their study, the authors presented participants with a fictitious case in which a man had made hateful comments towards the police (control group) or Blacks (experimental group) before measuring participants’ endorsement of free speech and their level of anti-black prejudice. Results show that among participants who were assigned to the control, i.e., anti-police, condition, participants’ prejudice scores were unrelated to their free-speech endorsement. In contrast, in the experimental, anti-Black, condition, participants’ prejudice correlated with a stronger endorsement of free speech. In other words, anti-Black prejudice determined how likely experimental participants were to claim that punishing someone for anti-Black prejudice violated this person’s rights to freedom of speech. Interestingly enough, low-prejudice people showed the opposite effect as they moved away from endorsing freedom of speech in racialized contexts. This pattern not only supports the hypothesis that freedom of speech is used to justify racist stances among anti-egalitarians but it also suggests that egalitarian participants may well sense that the endorsement of free speech tends to justify racist speech. Turning to a European context, Pettersson (2019) also examined discourses of three Finnish populist radical right politicians convicted of hate-speech, using a critical discursive psychological approach. Pettersson argues that these politicians managed to portray their hate-speech against Muslims as everything from trivial mistakes (‘I’m only human’) to acts of virtue, using the value of free speech (protecting freedom of speech when criticizing Islam).

2.3 Freedom

The more general idea of freedom can also serve as justification for discriminatory measures. Verkuyten (2013) examined Geert Wilders’ contributions to four parliamentary debates and newspaper articles in the Netherlands. The leader of the far-right Party for Freedom has gained popularity since its creation in 2006. The party is known for its harsh standpoint on Islam (ban on building of mosques, shutting down Islamic schools, putting an end to immigration from Islamic countries, enforcing ethnic registration, etc). Echoing the work by Snyder et al. (1979), Verkuyten stresses the context favoring the emergence of justification. During parliamentary debates, which are covered in the media, representatives are required to answer questions from other representatives. Verkuyten conducted a discursive analysis of these debates and his research highlights three steps. First, Wilders creates a distinction between the ‘in-group’, that is, us, the Western World, Europe, or the Netherlands, defined as a culture of freedom, tolerance, and democracy, and the ‘outgroup, them, that is, a monolithic version of Islam, a ‘barbaric’, ‘uncivilized’, ‘ideology’—rather than religion -, incompatible with ‘us’. Second, Wilders emphasizes how Islam is a threat to our culture and way of life, to the point of using the metaphor of war and depicts a stark contrast between values of freedom and tolerance, inherent to his cultural community, and the values of Islam. Freedom, in particular, is said to be at the core of Wilders’ ingroup identity and clashing with an ideological and political Islam. Third, by rejecting Islam, Wilders posits himself as a defender of ‘our’ key value, i.e., freedom. In this respect, prejudiced behavior towards Muslims is not in any way the expression of one’s own intolerance but rather the ultimate manifestation of the commitment to the duty to protect the moral values of our society.

2.4 Diversity

Diversity, in its broad definition, refers to the existence of differences, and can point to a wide range of categories. Although its exact meaning often remains somewhat unclear, diversity in the context of organizations typically refers to such features as gender, race, culture or religion, sexual orientation, and ability. Unzueta et al. (2012) examined how people embrace distinct definitions of diversity depending on their social agendas. In these authors’ experiment, participants had to read different descriptions of fictitious organizations, varying on two criteria. Organizations were either high or low in racial heterogeneity and either high or low in occupational heterogeneity (with a roughly equal or unequal proportion of different types of professions in the organization). Then, participants had to evaluate whether the organization had a high or low diversity. Results suggest that when confronted to a low racial heterogeneity organization, a higher occupational heterogeneity increased the perception of diversity but only among anti-egalitarian participants. This means that anti-egalitarian participants expanded their construals of diversity so as to include occupational diversity, allowing them to legitimize their negative stance on affirmative action policies in the context of the organization. This research suggests that people can shape diversity, as an ideology, in a manner that satisfies their political goals.

2.5 Secularism (laïcité)

In France, controversies surrounding the Muslim headscarf, and more specifically the ban of the veil, have been commonplace since the late 1980’s. Muslim women are not allowed to wear the veil in a number of settings, particularly in the school context. According to many politicians and thinkers, the veil conflicts with the ideology of laïcité (secularism). Some go so far as to say that Islam itself is seen as inherently incompatible with secularism, since it is portrayed as a fundamentalist proselytizing and backward principled religion, less discrete and inclusive than Judaism or Christianity (Allievi, 2012; Sibertin-Blanc & Boqui-Queni, 2015). Recent research by Roebroeck and Guimond (2016) highlights the existence of two conceptions of laïcité in France. The first conception derives from its original definition in France and holds that the Republic ensures freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion while it does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religious movement (the neutrality principle) (Baubérot, 2012; Lindner, 2018). This conception of laïcité is associated with greater tolerance towards diversity. The second conception has been emerging since the late 1980’s and parallels the debate regarding the headscarf. In this conception, neutrality applies not only to the Republic and its representatives but also to individuals in that the latter should refrain from wearing any religious symbols or expressing religious convictions in public, notably in schools, companies, kindergarten (Hennette-Vauchez, 2016). This second form of laïcité, called ‘new laïcité’, is associated with lower tolerance towards diversity. Being neutral with regard to religion becomes a goal in and of itself rather than a means to achieve equality. Clearly, secularism, which was once emblematic of left-wing organisations and opposing the power of the Catholic Church, is now also claimed by right-wing political leaders as an antidote to the separatism (‘communautarisme’) imputed to immigrant populations. Thus, when announcing the future ‘Law against separatism and ‘aiming at reinforcing secularism’, the French Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin (La Voix du Nord, 2020), said:

When you are ill, either you consider that you are not ill and your life expectancy is limited, or you become aware of it and you have to put a name on the illness and find a medication. The country is sick of its separatism and now of a political Islam that wants to overturn the values of the Republic.

As can be seen, laïcité is associated with a higher or a lower tolerance with regard to cultural and religious diversity and, consequently, can appeal to individuals with various political views depending on how it is defined. One may therefore wonder whether laïcité qualifies as a malleable ideology. If so, prejudiced individuals should modify their understanding of the ideology as a function of the specifics of the situation. Roebroeck and Guimond (2018) tested this hypothesis in several studies conducted in France. In one of their experiments, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the control condition, participants simply read an introductory text about the aim of the study and a brief history of the European Union. In the second condition, participants read an introductory text with an additional section presenting negative economic consequences of Turkey’s entry in the European Union (lower salaries, extra cost for the social security system, etc.). In the third condition, the additional paragraph about Turkey provided negative information regarding cultural compatibility (emphasizing cultural and religious differences and jeopardy for the EU cultural identity). Participants harboring anti-egalitarian preferences became stronger supporters of laïcité in the third condition, that is, when exposed to what has been defined in the intergroup relations literature as symbolic threat (for a review, see Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010, 2019). In stark contrast, egalitarian participants (i.e. individuals with low ‘social dominance orientation’, ‘SDO’, scores) did not endorse laïcité differently as a function of the condition (Fig. 6.1). These results show that the intergroup ideology known as laïcité in France is not inherently tolerant or not but that the form that is has taken in recent years can be seen as a sign of growing intolerance towards Muslims.

Fig. 6.1
A line graph plots attachment to laicite versus symbolic threat, realistic threat, and control. The line for low S D O lies at 4.5, while high S D O scores 4.5 in symbolic threat, 3.5 in realistic threat, and 3.9 in control. Approximated values.

Attachment to laïcité as a function of type of threat and social dominance orientation

Full size image

2.6 Anti-sexism

Having examined the phenomenon of malleable ideologies through different examples, the question arises as to whether the anti-sexism that surfaces in the public debate ought to be seen as a manifestation of malleability. Research efforts in sociology and law already seems to give us clues in this direction. Several scholars suggest that feminism is instrumentalized to cover prejudice, particularly among far-right politicians, in Europe (Al-Saji, 2018; Benelli et al., 2006; Bentouhami, 2018; Delphy, 2006; Duits & van Zoonen, 2006; Roux et al., 2006), as well as in the USA (Volpp, 2001) and in Canada (O’Neill et al., 2015). Both among feminists and in the general population, the position adopted in relation to religion, particularly Islam, is a source of controversy. Regarding the Muslim headscarf in particular, the regulations and bans generate a lot of conflict. In the public debate, women’s rights are presented as a core western value and the argument of women’s oppression is often brought up. Many are prompt to see the headscarf as a violation of the dignity of women, based on the assumption that women who wear headscarves are always pressured to do so (Howard, 2012), and point to the oppression of women in other cultures while simultaneously ignoring the oppression of women within the (own) dominant culture (Fernandez, 2009). This viewpoint overlooks the testimonies of women who report a wide variety of reasons for this clothing choice. Whether it is an act of modesty and devotion, or whether it is to protect oneself from the male gaze, to resist sexual objectification and take control of one’s own body, to affirm one’s Muslim identity and combat assimilation, the reasons are many (Afshar, 2008; Delphy, 2006; Djelloul, 2013; Howard, 2012; O’Neill et al., 2015; Roux et al., 2006; Ruby, 2006). In a study conducted in Belgium, right-wing and anti-egalitarian participants asked to describe European lifestyle values brought up the issue of women’s status significantly more than other participants (Van Oost et al., 2023), despite the fact that a large body of literature shows that anti-egalitarianism and right-wing political orientation correlates negatively with such concerns (Pratto et al., 2000).

In a similar vein, Muslims are often perceived to hold negative attitudes towards the LGBT community. Research suggests that a link between Islam and anti-gay attitudes exists but that it is largely dependent upon individuals’ religions orientations and fundamentalism level (Anderson & Koc, 2015). Nevertheless, much like in the case of femonationalism (Farris, 2017), ‘pink-washing’ or ‘homonationalism’ (Puar, 2007) would consist in the construction of a dichotomy between the LGBTQ-friendly West and the homophobic non-West, especially by Western politicians who wish to glorify the West and exclude the East. Although Puar (2007) originally situates homonationalism in the United States, the phenomenon also develops in Europe (Ammaturo, 2015). For instance, Marine Le Pen, a far-right French politician, declared: ‘The homophobia that is developing in our country is mainly due to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Am I going to be the only one who dares to say this again? Let us give the names of the aggressors!’ (Le Pen, 2018). In Belgium, a major LGBT+ rights association has issued a press release to declare its opposition to the presence of the NVA, a Belgian Flemish right-wing party, at the Pride parade (Rainbow House, 2019). The association denounces the intolerant immigration policies of the party as well as the transphobic statements by some party members, while the party is attending the Pride parade and claiming to promote values of tolerance. In the Netherlands, a comparable debate took place after an imam made homophobic comments, which were quickly condemned by the political establishment, while various ethnic minority voices argued that homophobic comments made by Catholics never cause such a stir (Hekma, 2002). Nevertheless, Ammaturo (2015) acknowledges the ‘existence of a thin demarcation line between genuine commitment to human rights and subtle instrumentalization of these same issues for political purposes’ (p.1154). Clearly, these matters call for further research.

3 Conclusion

In spite of a recent resurgence of derogatory speech, the general trend in Europe and in the US over the last decades has been one of lower acceptance of blatant prejudice. This evolution shows not only in the message underlying a series of important legal decisions, but also in the trend observed in public discourse. At the same time, various examples in the public discussion and the stances taken by citizens, organizations and extreme right-wing leaders in parts of the Western world reveal a surprising combination of anti-migrant and indeed anti-sexist views. The present chapter sought to dig into recent theoretical and empirical efforts in social psychological research in order to account for this paradox.

We started by building on the notion of modern racism whereby people can be simultaneously holding tolerant opinions while nurturing prejudiced beliefs and emotions against religious, racial, and gender minorities. We reviewed a series of efforts showing that prejudiced people only manifest their opposition to stigmatized groups, either in their judgment or in their behavior, in a context where they can justify their position and make it impervious to criticism. Next, we explored the work on the malleability of ideologies. This line of research proposes that prejudiced people recruit commonly accepted ideologies but turn them to their advantage. We presented evidence of this strategy with respect to the ideology of colorblindness, freedom of speech, freedom, diversity as well as secularism (laïcité). Building on these efforts, we conjectured that anti-sexist views could similarly serve an anti-migrant and nationalist agenda. Several scholars point to a weaponization of gender equality to promote an anti-immigration or anti-islam agenda. In parallel, recent results seem to indicate that the population deploys similar processes (Van Oost et al., 2023). Importantly, this normative view of women and feminism not only marginalizes migrants, especially Muslims, but effectively excludes Muslim women, in particular those wearing a headscarf, from public society. Their intersectional identity as Muslim women entails facing obstacles as both a gender minority and as members of a cultural and religious minority.

In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to associate some ideologies with clearly defined positions on the political spectrum, on key issues as prejudice against outgroups, particularly those related to Arabic-Muslim communities. The concept of malleable ideologies, as it has emerged in social psychology, offers some interesting possibilities for conceptualizing the complexity of the attitudes. This chapter aimed to present the efforts available to this point and to outline a series of avenues for future research.

Because these ideologies, whether they revolve around issues of justice, freedom or laicïté, are widely seen as moral truths or common sense (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 2004; White & Crandall, 2017), they are particularly tricky to deconstruct. Therefore, they provide efficient tools to prejudiced people because they allow covering up for, and indeed legitimizing, what would otherwise come across as unmistakable manifestations of prejudice or discrimination. As Reicher et al. (2008) argue, ‘Where ‘they’ are defined as not being of ‘us’ and as being against ‘us’, and where, in addition, we create a Manichean view of the world in which we represent good and they represent evil, then their defeat—if necessary, their destruction—becomes a matter of preserving virtue’ (p.1336). This reminds us of the very mobilizing yet treacherous and complex character of malleable ideologies, an effective means of creating and perpetuating boundaries between us and them, whom we want to exclude.