Refugees, migrants, and minorities of migrant origin frequently appear in European mainstream news in emergency situations: victims of human trafficking, suspects of terrorism, “bogus” asylum seekers. Through analysis of work by established filmmakers Michael Haneke, Fatih Akin, and Alfonso Cuarón, In Permanent Crisis contemplates the way mass media depictions become invoked by film to frame ethnic and racial Otherness in Europe as adornments of catastrophe.

Special attention is given to European auteur films in which riots, terrorism, criminal activities, and honor killings bring Europe’s minorities to the forefront of public visibility only to reduce them to perpetrators or victims of violence.