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Saving women and bordering Europe: narratives of “Migrants’ Sexual Violence” and geopolitical imaginaries in Russia and Sweden
Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Political Science. Södertörn University, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES). Swedish Institute of International Affairs.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4502-4770
2020 (English)In: Geopolitics, ISSN 1465-0045, E-ISSN 1557-3028, Vol. 25, no 3, p. 780-801Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symbolic in negotiating Europe and its borders. In Russia, the events were connected to a story of a Russian girl in Berlin being raped by migrants (a story later revealed to be fabricated) and a narrative of Europe collapsing because of immigration. In Sweden, the events were connected to reports of sexual violence at festivals, sparking a debate about “Swedish values” of gender equality being endangered by immigration. The article argues, firstly, that narratives of migrants‘ sexual violence performed bordering functions in both the symbolic sense of delineating national identity and Europeanness, and the concrete sense of legitimating a stricter border regime. Secondly, it argues that the narratives performed that function only by tapping into local geopolitical narratives, in the Russian case on the country‘s ambivalent relation to Europe, and in Sweden the idea of gender exceptionalism.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2020. Vol. 25, no 3, p. 780-801
National Category
Political Science Gender Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-36650DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2018.1465045ISI: 000544415700011Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85054695341OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-36650DiVA, id: diva2:1258406
Available from: 2018-10-24 Created: 2018-10-24 Last updated: 2025-01-08Bibliographically approved

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Edenborg, Emil

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CiteExportLink to record
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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf