By Kiran Kaur Grewal PhD

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the public discourses in France and Australia on a series of highly mediatised gang rapes. In the context of Australia, the ‘Sydney gang rapes’ attracted intense media and political attention in 2001 through reports of a gang rape phenomenon involving gangs of young ‘Lebanese’/’Muslim’ men targeting and raping ‘Australian’ girls. Some commentators also identified links between these gang rapes and what they identified as being similar gang rapes involving ‘young Muslim men’ in France: a phenomenon known as ‘les tournantes’.

Yuval-Davis, Nira 1997, Gender and nation, SAGE Publishers, London, 2009, 424p.