Beyond the ‘jihadi bride’ : exploring British media and government complicity in racial and gendered constructions of ‘terrorism’

This thesis argues the British media and government’s racialised and gendered narratives about Shamima Begum demonstrate their complicity as institutions of the colonial state, and their role in upholding its continued coloniality and dominance. I argue that Shamima’s case not only demonstrates how these narratives are gendered and racialised, but that it is through that racialisation and gendering that the colonial state is reaffirmed by providing discourses and knowledge that justify state actions. The thesis is split into two core parts. The first part is the theoretical foundations of the thesis, wherein I firmly ground it in postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist theorisations, building on the work of Said, Fanon, Hall, Mahmood, Spivak, and Lugones. I bring together decolonial and postcolonial scholarship on coloniality, race, and gender to highlight how they are organising principles of our politics. I then demonstrate how the media is a political institution that is complicit in the functioning of the colonial state, particularly with regards to ‘terrorism.’ I complement this with the second part of the thesis: three chapters of empirical critical discourse analysis, based on primary data I collected including over 650 media headlines and 9 semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders. The empirical chapters bring together my analysis of this wealth of material to provide evidence for 1) how the constructions of Shamima are racist and gendered; 2) the role of these constructions in justifying state actions and further marginalisation of British Muslims; and 3) the complicit nature of the relationship between the media and the government in the UK. Together, these two parts of the thesis demonstrate how the British media and government’s complicity as institutions of the colonial state, and their role in upholding its continued coloniality and dominance, is evidenced through the racialised and gendered narratives around Shamima Begum.