Saving Brown Women from Brown Men
Saving Brown Women from Brown Men

Old colonial refrains and why do we need a gender lens to understand the current refugee crisis

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to discuss gender discriminations and the various degrees of dehumanization currently affecting refugees in the European response to the refugee crisis. The widespread international paranoia that has lately emerged in Europe in response to the refugee crisis, which built on the already present islamophobia, is connected to ancient paradigms of structural racism. The interaction between a new type of cultural imperialism, old racist colonial heritage and gender discrimination is particularly evident in the European fear of “new” masculinities (as proved by the media’s hysterical coverage of the facts of Cologne), and in the revived old colonial refrain of “saving brown women from brown men” (Bhattacharyya 2008). As a result, this neocolonial and cultural imperialistic approach is greatly influencing reactions towards asylum seekers. Young Refugee men are rejected and seen as a threat to “European civilization”, though accounting for the majority of the inhabitants of non-institutional refugee camps and asylum demanders. At the same time, a parallel trend infantilizes women refugees through their perennial association with children, depicting them only as mothers and victims (Enloe 2003). We are consequently assisting the lack of recognition of young men’s status of victims of war and a paternalistic approach to women’s empowerment, thus perpetuating old features of structural racism and imperialism.

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