Kelly Pemberton is an associate professor of religion and women’s studies.

On Aug. 26, the French Council of State ruled to suspend the ban on the burkini that had been ordered by the resort of Villeneuve-Loubet. Since the Council aims to make this an exemplary ruling, it applies to all administrative courts in France. For some, the lifting of the ban represents a triumph for freedom of choice, religious expression, feminism or all three.

Yet the debate is far from over. Some mayors are still upholding the ban. Opinions about the burkini, which have been flying freely on the pages of print and digital newspapers, in the blogosphere and from the lips of Muslim and non-Muslim interlocutors everywhere, seem to be missing some crucial points.

The debate about the burkini is not really about feminism, rights or freedom of choice. However, parallels can be drawn with these issues: They are all concerned with how womens’ bodies serve as symbols of national progress(iveness) or, alternatively, “backwardness.”

Nor is the burkini furor actually about the problems France has faced in integrating Muslims. For those who have been shepherded en banlieue, compelled to live on segregated landscapes dotted by soulless concrete slabs, with inadequate jobs, minimal diversions and even fewer promises of a brighter future, the failure to integrate seems glaring. But for many others, living, loving, working, even thriving in France, this face of disdain towards Islam is the face of a stranger.

It’s not easily dismissed as the — in my opinion, justified — paranoia engendered by a series of devastating terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals these past 18 months. First Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Jan. 2015, then Bataclan and the Stade de France that following November, then mass murder by cargo truck in Nice this past Bastille Day and the slaying of an 84-year-old priest in Rouen just twelve days afterwards.

What’s missing from the debate over the burkini in France is a discussion of how it reflects a growing French crisis that is partially rooted in questions of identity, exacerbated by a deeply unpopular political leadership and fueled by economic insecurities that have loomed larger as the global financial crisis years of 2007-08 have faded from recent memory.

Unemployment remains at more than 10 percent, with youth unemployment more than twice as high. Gross domestic product grew slower in France than in any of the other 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries except Italy. For nearly a decade, ongoing national economic woes have percolated downward on a steady spiral. Among the few who have the reassurance of job security, life is relatively good. For most others, not knowing what tomorrow will bring can feel like a life sentence. Such insecurities breed fear and the need to place blame on easy targets. Under these circumstances, the burkini debate has operated as a touchstone for what France is becoming, where it has gone wrong and how it seems to be falling into decline, despite all efforts to save it.

The burkini ban in France may be dead. But the debate seems determined to live on.