Right-Wing feminism and the securitization of migration: on the example of the german campaign 120 Dezibel

Abstract

The “summer of migration” has facilitated a right-wing narrative that depicts migration and Islam as a security threat to European society, in which gender equality and women’s rights are instrumentalized for political purposes. This political strategy, defined by Farris as femonationalism, and its effects constitute the object of this paper. For this purpose, I analyze the German campaign "120-Dezibel", which takes advantage of migrant-led sexual assaults against European women in order to promote a xenophobic immigration policy that affects the current political discourse on refugees and the ›European border regime‹. It's concluded that, by focusing only on perpetrators of foreign origin and in white European victims, far-right feminists place the origin of gender violence beyond European borders, detracting attention from the violence rooted within them, perpetuating a colonial and patriarchal mentality. Finally, that such campaigns evidence how getting involved in the feminist struggle alone is insufficient if the anti-racist struggle is ignored.

Keywords

• far-right feminism
• securitization
• anti-muslim racism
• sexual violence
• migration