Sex with the Other: Anxieties and Representations of Gender in Europe during the Refugee Crisis

Abstract

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks witnessed in Paris in November 2015, a radicalisation of the tensions in the matter of asylum seekers and integration has re-emerged. This same anxiety has risen with renewed force just a few weeks later, when newspapers reported that an unspecified number of men of Middle Eastern and North African appearance sexually assaulted a thousand women during the New Year’s Eve festivity in Cologne, in what has been eventually described as a mass sex attack. This case has unfolded a new aspect of this particular tension. A general mood of hysteria with reference to a homogeneous and unified Islamic culture, considered incapable of respecting women, has suddenly risen again. Just like Muslim women have suffered for centuries from the male domination in their countries, it has been said, now it was the freedom of the European ones to appear at stake. In this context, the female body has been used as a battleground for claims of modernity, civilisation and power over the Middle Eastern menace in a variety of ways. The present essay provides an account of the use of gender stereotypes and dynamics in the context of recent migration to Europe. It shows how women’s bodies are placed in post-colonial political and racial discourses, considering the media as pivotal actors in the construction of a vicious cycle in which the discourse on the female honour gives legitimacy to a growing closure in the dialogue about and with the other.