Abstract

This paper argues that questions of integration and containment were crucial to define the (West) German and European ghetto at two historical moments: The early 1970s, when the West German state implemented new policies to stop the ‘guest-worker’ programs of the 1950s and 1960s, and the year 2005, when German media reacted in a panic to the riots in the Paris banlieues. An intersectional analysis of media discourses of the ghetto explores the continuities and shifts, as well as the contradictions in these narratives of exclusion. In the twenty-first century the contested discussions about ghettos as racialised and sexualised spaces are an important part of a new formation of European narratives. Counter-narratives reveal the many ghettos of Europe and challenge notions of integration and containment.

Keywords: Critical Studies of Ethnicity, Transnational Feminism, Ghetto, Berlin, Europe, Political Geography

How to Cite:

Stehle, M., (2017) “Narrating the Ghetto, Narrating Europe: From Berlin, Kreuzberg to the Banlieues of Paris”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 3(3), 48-70. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.59