French students taking exams. Photo: Emmanuelle TremoletFollowing the Paris attacks in November 2015, debates have re-emerged with force about the integration of non-EU migrants and their children across Europe. How can young people born and/or raised in a country such as France or Belgium – where the suicide-bombers and attackers had lived since they were children - commit the atrocities we have witnessed?
Since the attacks, the media and politicians have characterised migrant children and youth as ‘France’s fifth column’ and as potential recruits for Islamic State. Only three months after a massive outpouring of solidarity for refugees had been prompted by the image of 3 year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body lying on the Mediterranean shore, since November migrant children and youth have increasingly been represented as a hidden danger waiting to explode. After the widespread reporting of sexual assault against women in Cologne’s public spaces over New Year’s Eve, this shift was reflected graphically in the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoon entitled “What would little Aylan have grown up to be”, which depicted an adolescent Aylan Kurdi as a sexual predator.
Whether represented as future terrorists or rapists, the children of non-EU migrants have been extensively stigmatised, being singled out as threatening European societies through their failure to integrate and adopt European values.
