Islam, gender, and immigrant integration: boundary drawing in discourses on honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany

Public discourse on Muslim immigrant integration in Europe is increasingly framed around the presumed incompatibility of Islam and Western values. To understand how such framing constructs boundaries between immigrants and majority society in the media, we analyse newspaper discussions of honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany. These debates reinforce existing bright boundaries, or a strong sense of us versus them, between immigrants from Muslim and/or Turkish backgrounds and the majority population. Limited elements of boundary blurring are also present. We extend existing theory by showing that these boundaries are inscribed in the intersection of ethnicity, national origin, religion and gender.