Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control: Where French Feminist and Anti‐ immigrant Rhetoric Meet Author(s): Miriam Ticktin Reviewed work(s): Source: Signs, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Summer 2008), pp. 863-889 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/528851 . Accessed: 27/10/2012 13:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Signs. http://www.jstor.org Miriam Ticktin Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control: Where French Feminist and Anti-immigrant Rhetoric Meet hen I first arrived in the Paris region in 1999 to do research on the struggle by undocumented immigrants (les sans papiers) for basic W human rights, discussions of violence against women were remark- ably absent from the public arena. Nongovernmental organizations and researchers had begun to broach the topic, but with little public visibility.1 However, this changed in late 2000, with a media explosion on the issue of les tournantes, or the gang rapes committed in the banlieues of Paris.2 Such tournantes involve boys “taking turns” with their friends’ girlfriends, both parties usually being of Maghrebian or North African origin.