Gender-based Violence as a ‘Consequence of Migration’: How Culturalist Framings of GBV Ignore Structural Violence Against Migrant Women in France

Abstract

This chapter is based on a critical analysis of the political discourse on GBV and migration in France and assesses the processes through which culturalist framings have contributed to the racialisation of the issue and the stigmatisation of migrants. Within state-sponsored reports, notably by the French inter-ministerial mission for the protection of women victims of violence, GBV in migration contexts tends to be equated with forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and trafficking, whilst there have been recent proposals to introduce measures for the immediate deportation of foreign men guilty of GBV, feeding into the perception that GBV is first and foremost a foreign import. We argue that these culturalist framings of GBV result in a neglect of the deeper structural and systemic causes of violence and that they contribute to the circulation of racist, Islamophobic and anti-migration rhetoric within the French political space.