When 'Schoolgirls' Become 'Terror Brides': Exploring the media discourse on (aspiring) female ‘IS’ returnees in German and British media

Abstract

When women gave up their western lifestyle to join the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS), neo-orientalist narratives that circle the need to liberate women from the oppression of Islam were shaken. The media introduced labels such as ‘naïve schoolgirls’ or ‘seduced brides’ to stabilize the discourse and negate political motivations. These labels are challenged in the current debate on returnees. The ‘naïve schoolgirls’ are now also feared to be terror threats. The discursive shift has given rise to controversial debates about citizenship, human rights and the role of women in terrorism. This thesis explores the discourse on (aspiring) female ‘IS’ returnees in German and British newspapers through the lens of critical discourse analysis, feminism and postcolonialism. It studies a total of 209 articles from four leading newspapers: The center-liberal Guardian (UK) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (GER, ‘South German Newspaper’) as well as the right-leaning tabloids The Sun (UK) and Bild (GER, ‘Picture’). The articles were collected from the newspapers’ webpages in the timeframe from January 2018 to December 2020. They cover the period from when the topic of returnees first gained substantial media attention to when this study was conducted. The data set was analyzed using S. Jäger’s take on Critical Discourse Analysis, which is rooted in the Foucauldian understanding of discourse. It focuses on the process of normalization and the establishing of ‘collective images.’ The approach allows a structured reduction of the amount of text for the fine analysis and is therefore suitable for large data sets. At the same time, the different forms and layers of discourse are considered, making the approach suitable for online material with text and visual elements. Following a critical analysis of the data, I was able to identify five dominant gendered frames: 1) The groomed girl, much in line with previous stereotypes, 2) The regretful, a woman that made a mistake but eventually realizes the superiority of the West, 3) The accomplice, a woman that has committed violence, yet, as a henchwoman to a man, her agency is limited, 4) The fanatic Islamist, who, deeply entangled in the ‘IS’ ideology, is considered a terrorist threat, and 5) The social scrounger, a migrant woman and bad citizen that abuses the social system. Regularly, these frames are blended with ideas on motherhood and the role of daughters. Overall, my findings suggest that while some boundaries on what (Muslim) women can do have been widened, the depictions of returnees mostly remain reliant on normalized neo-orientalist ideas of what defines the West in opposition to the Islamic ‘Other’. Thus, I argue that the discourse on female ‘IS’ returnees can only be fully understood in the wider context of the national narratives of Germany and the UK and the exclusiveness of citizenship.