Everyday violence Against Ethnic Minoritized MPs: Intersectional Experiences and Coping Strategies

Everyday violence has become integral of the lives of politicians. Yet, violence directed at politicians who are historically marginalized based on gender and/or ethnicity seems to be more frequent and harmful. What are the experiences of minoritized MPs with everyday violence and what are the intersectional differences? How do they cope with various forms of violence? We draw on interviews with MPs with a so-called migration background in the German Bundestag and distinguish between violence caused by actors within and outside the circle of the party and parliament. Violence by the former, employees and representatives in the parliament from their own and other parties, generally takes subtle forms. Violence of the latter, individual citizens as well as organized groups, is more overt and extreme, like physical attacks. We find clear differences between violence against MPs with a visible and invisible migration background. MPs who are passing as ‘native’ Germans encounter violence for their political ideology. MPs with visible migration backgrounds face extreme violence when they politicize their backgrounds in dossiers like integration or foreign policy; for women this includes rape threats. While invisible minority MPs have a more ad hoc style of coping, visible minoritized MPs develop structural coping strategies that allow them to keep going.