CROSS-CULTURAL TRANSFER OF HARMFUL TRADITIONAL PRACTICES AS A FACTOR OF DESTABILIZATION OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIETY

Tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within one group or a society with a
symbolic meaning. However, not every tradition is positive – there are many
harmful traditional practices throughout the world, most of them centered
around treatment of women and children in various cultures. Even though most of
them predominantly target women, that is, girls, such as early child marriage,
female genital mutilation, honour killing, etc., it is a quite unknown fact that boys,
that is, male minors, face similar problems as well. In this paper, the author aims
to analyze the harmful traditional practice known as Bacha Bazi, that is, “the
dancing boy”, referring to culturally approved, centuries-old tradition of child
sexual abuse practiced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has emerged as a
negative phenomenon within the migration crisis, and thus, entered the European
space. In exploring the origins and forms of cultural justification of this ill
practice, the author seeks the answer the following research question: “Does the
emergence of the harmful traditional practice of Bacha Bazi along the migration
routes pose a threat to Europe?”. By using the method of content analysis, as well
as through interviews with humanitarian workers in the Republic of Serbia, the
author intends to shed some light onto this negative practice, as well as offer
possible detection and prevention methods aimed at saving the male minors from
such environments.