Integrating the Patriarch? Constructs of Migrant Masculinity in Times of Managing Migration and Integration

Abstract

With this paragraph the journalist Martina Salomon ended a newspaper article on migration politics in Austria. In the article she vehemently criticized Austrian migration politics of earlier decades for having been too lax and argued for the need for a modern, rational approach, as the then discussed (and explained further below) Red-White-Red-Card would be. I cite this paragraph as it is typical of a particular discourse on the need for modern migration and integration policies in Austria and beyond. This discourse particularly employs notions of culture, dif- ference, gender and sexuality to make its case for a modern politics of migration and integration. And, as I want to show in this chapter, it is notions of dangerous, patriarchal migrant masculinity that are often employed to articulate the dangers of migration if not governed correctly.

It is advantageous to recruit young, well trained people from our culture area, that is: a young [female¹] Polish nurse or a [female] Slovakian engineer is to be preferred over an unskilled worker in whose culture area it is common to forbid the wife to have a job and who give their daughters a headscarf instead of educational chances. Of the second category we have, for sure, too many, of the first, too few. The ‘Red-White-Red-Card’ is all fine and good — but it comes decades too late.

(Salomon, 2009)