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)
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)