“Hands off our women!” - ethnicizing sexual difference in recent representations of refugees and immigrants

Abstract

At least since the 1990s a large body of research concerning the role of white women in the colonial enterprise testifi ed to the confl uence between upholding racist narratives and women’s rights discourses. Due to the extensive media coverage of multiple sexual harassment cases during the New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany, anti-racist and feminist discourses clashed in Poland and all over Europe, underpinning far-right rhetoric. The following intersectional and postcolonial analysis of contemporary narratives of the Muslim sexual deviancy maps discourses underlying recent representations of immigrants and refugees. From dwelling into Western European colonial iconographies, via liberal feminist discourse, to investigating links between publishing houses, press organs and political parties in Poland, this study puts forward an argument that contemporary islamophobia is complex and widespread far beyond being an age-old argument in far-right rhetoric.