Sex with the Other
Sex with the Other

Anxieties and Representations of Gender in Europe During the Refugee Crisis

Summary/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. 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. 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.

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