Borders, Boundaries, Bodies: Full Project Description

Older children who accompanied their European parents to Syria, or were born there, are treated as future threats, better left in camps and prisons in Syria and Iraq. These children are, however, entitled to European citizenship as a birthright (they acquire their citizenship through birth to a citizen parent). Yet, most governments have been reluctant to recognize children’s rights to cross the border to the country of their citizenship, despite this right being part of the European human rights protocols. Germany is an exception, now being close to repatriating all German women and children from the camps. Other European governments, such as France, have recently repatriated some of the children in the camps along with their mothers, while other mothers and children are left behind without a clear explanation if and when they would be repatriated. The Netherlands is repatriating women and children in order to stand trial, while Britain has as of October 2022, only repatriated seven children. These processes reflect haphazardly applied border regimes of non-belonging that largely keep (former) IS members out of their European home countries. 

Media draw boundaries of non-belonging. In their targeted production of knowledge, they contribute to the manufacturing of an us/them logic of non-belonging. This logic stretches beyond the limited number of men, women, and children who joined IS and impacts entire European Muslim communities. For instance, take the stigmatizing phrase “Jihadi Bride” often applied to women who joined IS. Jihad is Arabic for struggle associated with achieving insight into religious texts and practice. In the current context, it has been coopted across a wide political spectrum to mobilize people in various ways to engage in war-like struggle. The use of the term “jihad” in European media evokes ideas of dangerous foreign influence from war-ridden countries (Afghanistan, Syria) or global terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and IS. 

There is also a gendered racialized side of the use of “jihadi bride,” which informs misogyny towards Muslim women. Its use echoes a history across Europe and North America in which women lost their citizenship when marrying foreign men, or a history of questioning whether women are capable of having allegiance to their natal citizenship when they marry across borders (De Hart 2012; Navest, de Koning, and Moors 2016). The modifier ‘jihadi’ erases the husband in question and suggests that these women have wedded themselves to a particular Islamic ideology. The media’s use of “jihad” and its attachment to “bride” places these European women outside the symbolic space of the nation.