‘How Would You React If You Learned That Your Son Was Gay?’ Racialized Sexualities and the Production of Migrant Others in Europe

Abstract

Issues of gender and sexuality have recently risen from being a marginal topic to the centre of migration debates and integration politics across Europe. Today, migrants’ gender norms and their attitudes towards sexual self-determination are widely viewed as important fields of inquiry and intervention. Tests, integration courses and strict regulations against what has been termed ‘harmful traditions’ are being debated and put into place to safeguard vulnerable migrant populations as well as members of the wider society. This chapter maps the European trends and national specificities of these new politics of racialising migrant sexualities, documenting the sometimes highly problematic use of feminist and gay-rights arguments to legitimise restrictive migration and integration politics and showing that these politics target Muslim migrants in particular and feed into contemporary anti-Muslim racism. More essentially, the new politics of racialised sexualities must be understood as a general reconfiguration of racism in the crisis-ridden times of neoliberalism.