In summer 2015, the Austrian migration regime was temporarily disrupted when refugees for a brief moment managed to assert freedom of movement across the country’s border. This article discusses how negative images of foreign masculinity allowed Austrian politicians to regain control and legitimise new restrictive asylum laws. The analysis shows that politicians took up and reframed existing notions about foreign masculinity to create gendered, racialised and classed images of racial difference. They established a securitising perspective in debates on refugees which allowed them to gain support for restrictive measures against a highly vulnerable group. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Masculinity Refugees Racism Austria

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