Introduction: everyday bordering regimes and transitioning masculinities of racialized migrant men: a case study of the EU

Abstract

The introduction to the Special Issue (SI) presents the collection’s theorization on the impact of everyday, micro-level borders that are propelled by discourses of Islamophobia, racism, and ethno-nationalism related to racialized migrant men’s masculinities in the European Union (EU). Along with the increased movement of racialized (Muslim) men to the EU’s shores have come crisis narratives about their otherness to b/order them. These borders operate in everyday encounters between migrant men and local communities as much as between groups of migrant men themselves, whether it is in the realm of livelihood strategies, romantic desires, assertions about sexuality and sexual identity, homosocial interactions, or friendships. This SI uses the frame of ‘transitions’ to interrogate how transitions in masculinities and masculine self-perceptions are shaped by b/ordering that is enacted every day and in the everyday against racialized migrant men. It argues that masculinized Islamophobia and masculine border(ing) thicken borders between these men and the natives to justify the men’s migrant (un)deservingness. The SI also brings into discussion strategies of masculine resistance and refusal that b/ordered men undertake through enactment and embodiment of caring masculinities or by their refusal to subscribe to norms of hegemonic masculinity.