Anti-Muslim racism and the racialisation of sexual violence: ‘intersectional stereotyping’ in mass media representations of male Muslim migrants in Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how German print media have represented male migrants with Muslim backgrounds in relation to mainstream society and the stereotypes drawn on and created, including that of the migrant Muslim man as a criminal and sexual perpetrator. Media reports about ‘lecherous refugees’ have risen in the wake of wider social controversies about the ‘European refugee crisis’ and the consequences of welcoming over 1.5 million refugees from predominantly Muslim countries into Germany in recent years. Many of these reports reflect the Cologne New Year’s Eve 2016 sexual attacks by migrant men against German women. This study of German print media identifies a racialisation and ‘islamicisation’ of sexual violence and proposes the original theoretical concept of intersectional stereotyping to conceptualise the intersecting of religious, racialised and gendered patterns in media representations of male Muslim migrants. The research combines and extends the analytical frameworks of intersectionality and stereotyping to develop a new concept useful in media studies and beyond. The article provides a previously unexplored insight into racialised anti-Muslim stereotyping in German society in socio-political and historical context through the lens of print media.