Unicode Reference in XSLT

Dear List-Members,
I encountered problems when trying to reference unicode-characters in my XSLT-script.
I try to find out whether there is a backspace or cartridge return character in the content of a certain input node. So, I was trying to test if that string contains a "& # 8 ;"-character (I use whitespace between the separate letters, so they are not filtered).
The problem following is a syntactical one. XSLT does not accept this reference. Therefore, the question is: How can I reference Unicode-characters in a string-test in an XSLT-script?
Greets and thanks in advance,
Jan Mendling
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