Racialized and Gendered Cultures of Othering: Displaced People in the Neoliberal World

This article explores how the notion of being besieged has been linked to the construction of the racialized and gendered cultures of othering the displaced people. It argues that the North-South migration divide, structured by race, class and gender, echoes coloniality of global power relations, reflected in racialized and gendered notions of “border security”, “national security”, securitization of migration, and related politics of fear. It further asserts that the production of fear from being besieged is gendered, as well as racialized. Media play an important role in these processes by partaking in the cultural reproduction of images of “dangerous men” tied to fantasies of sexist violence linked to masculinist aggression, and depicting idealised victims, those who are feminised and feel fear. This politics of production of fear, it is argued, breeds racialized and gendered cultures of othering people who are displaced and creates an idealised “fearing subject” – the nation-state, people/nation, and its values, and renders the economic, social and political sources of insecurity, invisible.