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Bezness: Appropriating mobility and bordering Europe through romantic love

Heidi

Well-known member
Bezness: Appropriating mobility and bordering Europe through romantic love https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/5/3/389/4077058

According to the existing literature, the word ‘bezness’ has been coined in Tunisia before it has been adopted by European tourists in order to become an established term in both public culture and media coverage on the phenomenon across North Africa and Europe (Lévy, Laporte and El Feki 2001; Carpenter-Latiri and Buchberger 2010). If one searches the term ‘bezness’ on the internet one finds dozens of blogs and online-forums in which self-declared ‘victims’ of bezness warn other women of engaging in relationships with local men during a holiday in countries like Egypt, Gambia, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, or Turkey. The fact that most of these are predominantly Islamic countries prompts many affected women to link bezness with Muslim culture, often resulting in discriminatory outbursts and the stereotyping of Muslim men as ‘false fairy-tale princes’ (Präkelt 2012).3 This anti-Muslim discrimination features particularly in the publications of Evelyn Kern who runs the most popular online-portal on bezness in the German language. Her webpage ‘1001 stories’ contains a repository of 256 testimonies of ‘victims’ of bezness in which Muslim men appear only as calculating, patriarchal and violent villains. Already the definition provided establishes a direct link between bezness and Islam: ‘This expression derives from the English word business and stands in many, principally Oriental [sic!] holiday countries for the brutal business with the feelings and trust of European women and men.’ Despite this neo-discrimination (Balibar 1995), which links bezness to a particular culture, Kern can frequently disseminate her views as an ‘expert’ in media reports.4

However, also versions of the dominant public discourse on bezness, which avoid this explicit neo-discrimination, are based on a clear-cut distinction between female European victims and male foreign villains who ruthlessly exploit the genuine feelings and empathy of the former. This clear-cut victim–villain dichotomy is problematic because it is based on the concealment of two important aspects of bezness. What the hegemonic discourse on bezness in Europe denies is, first, any connection between bezness and female sex tourism to North Africa, and second, that both phenomena are intertwined with the European border regime which facilitates both of them by creating a highly unequal access to mobility.

The suppression of these aspects becomes most apparent in the claim that ‘the word bezness derives from the German word “Beziehung” (relation) and the English word business, thus doing business’.5 What this incorrect, but influential, etymology conceals is the partial origin of the word ‘bezness’ in the French word ‘baiser’. In this way, this false but influential etymology conceals that local men’s engagement in intimate relationships with European tourists is related to ‘doing business’ precisely because it is related to female sex tourism to North Africa. As in other tourist destinations in Africa such as Gambia (Ebron 2002), Kenya (Kibicho 2009) or Senegal (Salomon 2009), the embracing of tourism as a development strategy facilitated the emergence of an informal sex trade with tourists in North Africa from the 1970s onwards and this sex trade includes female tourists as an important group of clients (Lévy, Laporte and El Feki 2001). Consequently, the influential but false definition of bezness as originating from the fusion of the word business with the German word for relationship can be revealed as a construction.

The term ‘bezness’ appeared for the first time in Europe in 1992 through the same-titled movie by Tunisian director Nouri Bouzid before it was popularized by Kern and other self-declared ‘victims’ of bezness from 2003 onwards. The movie tells the story of Rouzid, a young Tunisian who engages in informal sex work with male and female European tourists to provide for his family, but also in the hope of migrating to Europe by convincing one of his clients to marry him. The movie thus points out what media reports and online-forums on bezness in Europe mostly deny: that the term bezness fuses the English word ‘business’ with the French word ‘baiser’ (informal for ‘to kiss’, but also for ‘to f**k’), thereby reflecting that what is sold in this form of ‘business’ with European tourists is, among others, ‘active penetrative sex’ (Carpenter-Latiri and Buchberger 2010). Hence, bezness has to be analysed in the context of female sex tourism to North Africa, which has become a widespread phenomenon since the arrival of mass tourism, as Shereen El Feki observes in her study on changing sexual life in the Arab region:

Commercial sex work is one of the few equal opportunity employers […] in the Arab region; even heterosexual men have their corner of the business, or bezness, as it is called in Tunisia. From Agadir [tourist resort in Morocco] to Aqaba [tourist resort in Jordan], where there are Western women on vacation, you will find local men at their service. (El Feki 2013: 194–5)
 
To acknowledge that bezness constitutes a form of sex tourism is important because it destabilizes the neat victim–villain distinction of the dominant public discourse on bezness which is largely informed by the perspective of self-declared ‘victims’. The denial of any link between bezness and sex tourism is possible because female sex tourism ‘sails under the romantic flag’ (Kresta 2011). In contrast to their male counterparts, female sex tourists look for intimate relationships rather than casual sex, while payment usually assumes the form of invitations, gifts or support for the family. In the academic debate there has therefore been an attempt to distinguish female ‘romance tourism’ from male ‘sex tourism’ (Jeffreys 2003). This distinction is, however, misleading. What it obscures—like the dominant public discourse on bezness—is that the relationships between Western tourists and locals in North African resorts are shaped by a highly unequal access to mobility and economic resources—irrespective of their gender (Sánchez Taylor 2006). Consequently, bezness is not reducible to a strategy of ruthless aspiring migrants trying to exploit the feelings of naïve European tourists. Bezness rather emerges as the seizure of opportunities by locals engaging in informal sex work with European tourists, in which a long-term relationship and a marriage is the best they can hope for (Ebron 2002: 169). Importantly, Western women enter these relationships from a privileged position: in contrast to local men they engage in these relationships to satisfy personal desires rather than economic needs or in the hope of migration opportunities (Brennan 2004; Sánchez Taylor 2006).

To be clear, I do not deny that local men try to take advantage of European tourists, nor that instances of ‘broken hearts’ exist. My point is not to declare female sex tourists as culprits and to invert the victim–villain distinction of the dominant bezness discourse. What I want to stress is the complexity of the phenomenon and the ambivalence of all actors involved in order to reveal the clear-cut victim–villain distinction of the dominant public discourse on bezness in Europe as simplistic and misleading. What we find on the ground is a wide range of fluid relationships characterized by complex negotiations that make it impossible ‘to easily separate oppressor and oppressed’ (Ebron 2002: 183; cf. Salomon 2009). Instead of a simple victim–villain dichotomy we encounter young local men trying to take advantage of often much older European tourists who, in turn, take advantage of their privileged position in the ‘geopolitics of mobility’ (Hyndman 2004) as they look for sexual adventures and romantic opportunities in the anonymity (North) African tourist destinations (Ebron 2002: 178–9; Kibicho 2009: 104–8). Hence, bezness constitutes a complex phenomenon that has to be analysed as the flipside of female sex tourism and thus as a phenomenon that is facilitated, besides other factors such as a racialized economy of sexual desires, by a highly unequal access to mobility, economic resources and life opportunities.

 
Bezness as a mode of appropriation

This section provides an alternative reading of bezness as a mode of appropriation of mobility to Europe. What this reading highlights is the multi-faceted intertwinement of migratory practices like bezness and border regimes. Besides being provoked by restrictive visa policies, bezness and the European border regime are intertwined in at least three ways, as the following account illustrates: through migrants’ attempts to recode the methods and logics of control into means of appropriation, in the clandestine transgression of the border regimes’ norms and regulations, and finally, in the recuperation of this mode of appropriation by the European border regime.

‘No more family reunifications, please!’ moans R, an employee of consulate Z, after dealing with the third application in a row for a family reunification visa. Just then a clean-shaven and smartly dressed man approaches R’s counter. He requests a family reunification visa to live with his wife, a citizen of the country represented by consulate Z. R sighs. She flips through his documents and whispers to me in a meaningful voice: ‘He is 27, she is 57!’ She asks the young man the usual questions for a family reunification visa, making sure he is aware of her aversion:

‘Where did you meet your wife?’
‘By accident, on Facebook.’
‘How often have you seen each other?’
‘She has visited me twice.’
‘When did you decide to marry?’
When R enters the young man’s name into the electronic file she learns that he has already been denied a visa by consulate Z. At that time he had applied for a tourist visa to visit his girlfriend, whom he had met outside a hotel during her holiday. R clicks on the application to find out why it was rejected. The reason was that the young man had already lodged a similar application at the consulate of another member state which had also been rejected.
‘You have already applied for a visa here before. Why was it rejected?’
‘I do not wish to say. You can read this on your computer,’ the young man replies self-consciously.
He seems to assume that his application cannot be rejected this time because he is married to a European woman. He cannot see that R enters in the opinion section of his electronic file: ‘Note the significant age difference between the two and the visa history of the applicant.’

What the young man’s repeated attempts to engage in intimate relationships with European women to migrate to Europe illustrate is that practices of appropriation like bezness are inseparably intertwined with the methods and logics of border control. Bezness constitutes an attempt to convert the most crucial effect of the European border regime—the creation of an unequal access to mobility—into a pathway to mobility to Europe. More precisely, bezness is enabled by the border regime because those it imbues with a privileged position in the geopolitics of mobility (EU-citizens) carry their right to marry across the borders that the restrictive visa policies create for others. What locals do when they seduce European tourists in the hope to lure them into marriage is to recode the biographical features that render them as a high ‘migration risk’ in the eyes of consular staffs—being young, unmarried and without social and economic strong ties to their country of origin—into means for the appropriation of mobility. This highlights that migrant practices of appropriation operate through the repurposing of the actors, methods, logics and effects of control into means of appropriation. This capacity of migrants to recode the means of methods of border control has also been noted by other scholars. Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim likens aspiring migrants who transform a marriage certificate into a ‘door opener’ to Europe, for instance, as ‘very skilful flexible border artistes’ who know ‘how to subvert, circumvent, bridge or make use of borders, all the while carefully adapting to context, situation and moment’ (Beck-Gernsheim 2011: 62–3).
 


One afternoon, I am sitting with M in his back office. M is processing visa applications from the past few days. He sits in front of his computer, a huge pile of files next to him. M takes a thick folder and starts to flip through the documents. A young man requests a visa to marry a woman from the country consulate Z is representing. ‘Look at this’ he says. ‘She has already been married twice and she has two daughters, one of them is even two years older than the guy.’ On the screen I read in the opinion section of the electronic file:

‘Note that the applicant does not speak proper [language of the country consulate Z is representing]. He shows the typical profile of young men who engage in relationships with tourists to find a sponsor for a visa.’
It has been entered by the staff who received the application at the front desk. M explains:
‘The guy is from […] in the South. There is nothing there. He has worked as a guide for excursions in the tourism sector. She says that’s where they have met in November 2011. But there is no stamp in her passport.’
The application also contains a folder with photographs.
‘They always provide these pictures to prove that there is a real relationship. Normally I do not even look at them …’ says M.
The pictures show the couple having dinner, kissing in a swimming pool or him carrying her on his arms, another woman standing next to them.
‘This must be the daughter. I don’t understand her. How can she accept this?’
There is another picture of the embracing couple kissing each other.
‘Sometimes they even provide hot pictures. It can get quite disgusting.’
Then there is a series of pictures, showing the couple visiting the young man’s parents. One picture portrays the woman, sitting on a sofa in the middle of his parents, all smiling. ‘Look at this… the golden hen.’ More pictures follow, showing the couple in poses and situations that are usually associated with romantic love. M puts the folder away.


‘I don’t understand this. What does she want from him? It is obvious what he wants, but what does she want? He is 20 years younger; he can only be a sex toy for her. But why does she have to marry him, this is what I don’t understand. Come here, enjoy yourself, but don’t be stupid and start something serious. …’

M advises the central office for migration to reject the application, for formal reasons; the income of the woman is not sufficient to sustain her spouse and the claimed duration of their relationship cannot be verified due to the missing stamp in her passport.


M admits that he rejects most applications for family reunification visas by bi-national couples. Just like T, the head of another visa section, who reports that his consulate receives two or three requests for family reunification visa from young local men each day.

‘These relationships often result from holiday romances. Those who want to start a relationship of course want to get to know each other. But in 98% of the cases it is not possible to issue a tourist visa since young people usually do not have a permanent job. In a way we compel people to marry since we do not issue visa for visits to [country T’s consulate is representing].’

T regularly interviews local spouses applying for a family reunification visa on the basis of a catalogue of questions that is sent from the local migration administration in the country he is representing. Just like M, T usually advises to reject the application.

‘You have to consider that there is often a large age gap between the spouses and sometimes they do not even speak the same language. We then try to speak with them [European women] … Recently, I had a couple here where I thought this was a genuine relationship, but in most cases it is obvious that it is just about the visa and I advise to reject the application. They can go to court then’, he adds with grin. ‘After all, one cannot prohibit people to marry.’
 
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