State Responsibility and Differential Inclusion: Addressing Honor-Based Violence in the Netherlands and Germany

From 2004, the Dutch parliament developed a comprehensive response to honor-based violence, initially in consultation with immigrant and nonimmigrant political actors, while German politicians used honor-based violence to justify the restriction of immigrants from membership, portraying them as problematic subjects. More recently, the influence of immigrant actors on Dutch policy has waned, while in Germany policy continues to develop haphazardly with generally limited support for gendered violence services. Analyzing media and policy debates, we turn to the concepts of state responsibility and differential inclusion to show how actors engaged with these policies intersectionally produce national membership along gendered and racialized lines.