Family gatherings can be a pleasant but occasionally dreadful experience. In Germany, this reveals a simple truth: all refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others. Under international humanitarian law, states are expected to grant asylum to people fleeing from war and persecution, regardless of nationality, race, gender, religion, or political opinion.
It is not only private spaces that offer a platform for racist and xenophobic propaganda. These claims seem to target one asylum-seeker group that is considered particularly undesirable: lone traveling, young African and Arab men. Part of this irrational antagonism stems from deep-rooted racism. Black and non-white bodies were at once despised and fetishized, mystified and sexualized, displayed and hidden from view.
Nonetheless, intimate contact between European men and non-white women was often tolerated as a perfidious way of appropriating conquered societies, cultures, and subject bodies. Black bodies were ascribed an exotic, boundless, and violent sexuality. Yet, colonial subjects were also deemed lazy, lustrous, barbarous, and irrational.
Protests against asylum-seeker homes are no rarity in German cities today. Right-wing demonstrations in Freital Saxony and a steep increase in reported assaults targeting refugees and asylum-seekers nationwide echo the murderous arson attacks of Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Solingen in By appealing to nationalist and xenophobic sentiments, conservative politicians condone and incite such hate crimes.
Around 73, applications were submitted in Germany. Meanwhile, conflict-affected neighboring countries in Africa and the Middle East are bearing the brunt of global displacement. In Lebanon, every fourth inhabitant is now a refugee. Ethiopia alone hosts , refugees , the highest number in Africa. Kenya comes a close second with over , having escaped civil wars in Somalia and South Sudan.
