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Discussion on Violence against German Muslim Migrant Women

Daehee Choi 1

1대구가톨릭대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In recent discussions on violence against migrant women, the prevailing discourse focused on the axis of “the West vs. Islam,” “democracy vs. pre-democracy,” “human rights vs. violence.” This paper starts from the premise that such polarization and generalizations do not describe adequately the reality of women with migration background in Germany. An empirical analysis of the data on violence against migrant women clearly demonstrates that the majority of women of Turkish origin do not live in traditional and extremely violent partner relationships. Migrant women are exposed to violence not primarily because they are Muslims, rather because their social circumstances such as lack of language ability or education. If such social factors would be disregarded and the problem of violence and gender inequality would be attributed to only “Islamic” culture, then the problem of domestic violence and lack of gender inequality in German majority society could be made invisible. This “culturalization” arguments replacing the social difference by the religious one closely resemble the arguments of the Muslim-fundamentalists explaining the political difference by the religious one.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.