Same Problem, Different Solutions: The Case of ‘Honour Killing’ in Germany and Britain

Abstract

Multicultural societies face increasing difficulties in accommodating claims of cultural and religious groups that do not share the values and lifestyles of the majority society. Particularly in recent years, the ‘cultural practices’ of such groups, most notably so-called ‘honour killings’, have become central issues in public and policy debates in these societies (Hellgren and Hobson, 2008; Korteweg and Yurdakul, 2010; Phillips and Saharso, 2008;Prins and Saharso, 2008;Rostock and Berghahn, 2008). These debates have centred on how to interpret, prevent and punish such crimes. The treatment of these issues has often been problematic. In most cases, addressing ‘honour killing’ without simultaneously stigmatising migrant communities as ‘backward’ or as a culturally different ‘other’ has proved to be highly difficult (Welchman and Hossain, 2005). The dominant public discourse has tended to associate ‘honour killing’ with Islamic and Middle Eastern cultures, and to define it as a culturally specific type of murder that occurs only in migrant communities (Meetoo and Mirza, 2011;Reddy, 2008;Sen, 2005).KeywordsDomestic ViolencePolicy DebateMigrant CommunityForced MarriageParliamentary DebateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.