| Gender, 'race,' class, and sexuality are the defining features of the politics of migration, integration and identity in Europe. This dissertation examines how discourses of gender and sexuality are integral to understanding the ways in which the broader German and European public have racialized Muslim and/or Turkish migrants, and how these attitudes have impacted the rights of minorities in the European social, economic, cultural and legal spheres. These attitudes, reinforced by representatives of the state, political elites and activists, are then organized and disseminated via state institutions, NGOs, and the media. By following public debates among certain interest groups and the media, I examine how discourses of gender and sexuality are deployed to construct a racialized Muslim and migrant identity that is then labeled as incommensurable with an imagined European identity. |
