Helms Jørgensen, Christian. Are apprenticeships inclusive of refugees? Experiences from Denmark. (2022). [PDF]

Helms Jørgensen, C. Are apprenticeships inclusive of refugees? Experiences from Denmark. In L. Moreno Herrera, M. Teräs, P. Gougoulakis, & J. Kontio (Eds.), Migration and Inclusion in Work Life – The Role of VET. 2022. Atlas Akademi.

Context/purpose: The influx of a large number of young refugees in Europe during 2015–2016 drew attention to the role of vocational education and training (VET) in the integration of refugees. In Denmark, the VET system is based on the apprenticeship model, where most training is located in workplaces. Apprenticeships are internationally praised for their inclusiveness, as they provide direct access to employment for vulnerable learners. The research question examined in this chapter is what role apprenticeships play in the integration of immigrants and refugees. Special focus is placed on the recent development after the “refugee crisis” of 2015–2016 and the introduction of a new special apprenticeship programme for refugees in Denmark, known as Basic Integration Education (IGU). 

Approach/Methods: First, this chapter reviews research on the capability of apprenticeships to include disadvantaged youth, and particularly research on ethnic minority students in apprenticeships. Next, it examines the political response to the refugee crisis and the process behind the introduction of the new apprenticeship programme, IGU, in Denmark. This study is based on analyses of key policy documents on the development of IGU, including official acts and documentation, evaluations, applied research publications and statistics. It also includes analyses of 11 individual interviews with key stakeholders in vocational schools, nongovernmental organisations and labour market organisations involved in the programme. The interviews conducted either face-to-face or by telephone and were recorded, transcribed and analysed for the description of two examples of how the IGU has been organised. 

Findings/Results: Immigrants and refugees face some special barriers in apprenticeships, including problems of navigating a complex system, entrance requirements and access to apprenticeship contracts and to communities in workplaces. A special apprenticeship programme for refugees (IGU) was introduced in Denmark during a period with labour shortage, but also with new anti-immigration measures, which limited refugees’ access to apprenticeships. This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the IGU programme in the following five years and examines two successful examples of IGU programmes. 

Conclusion/Key message: While apprenticeships are not particularly inclusive of ethnic minorities and refugees, the IGU programme for refugees is considered a success. The success is due to a tripartite agreement in 2016 that solved the critical issues concerning wages, apprenticeship contracts, certification, curriculum and governance. The IGU, however, also has some weaknesses, which make many refugees leave the programme before completion to shift into better-paid regular employment.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358743292_Inclusion_for_all_in_VET_A_comparative_overview_of_policies_and_state_of_research_about_migration_integration_and_inclusion_in_Germany_Austria_and_Switzerland

Dahl, Malte. Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market. (2022)

Dahl, Malte. Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 23(4), 2022, 2269–2287.

Does cultural dissimilarity explain discrimination against immigrant-origin minorities in the labour market? I conducted a factorial field experiment (N = 1350) to explore how explicit group cues trigger differential treatment and whether individuating information that counters cultural-based stereotypical representations mitigate discrimination. Employers were randomly assigned a job application with a putative female ethnic majority or immigrant-origin minority alias and CV photographs portraying the minority candidate with or without a headscarf—perhaps the quintessential marker of Muslim identity. Moreover, half the job applications conveyed information intended to reduce cultural distance by indicating a liberal lifestyle and civic participation. The results demonstrate that immigrant-origin women are significantly less likely to receive an invitation to a job interview, especially if they also wear a headscarf. Contrary to expectations, the differential treatment is not moderated by the individuating information in the applications. This indicates that the differential treatment is persistent and also targets immigrant-origin minorities who have acquired soft skills and signals cultural proximity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-021-00844-y

Caselli, Mauro & Paolo Falco. As Long as They Are Cheap: Experimental Evidence on the Demand for Migrant Workers. (2020) [PDF]

Caselli, Mauro & Paolo Falco. As Long as They Are Cheap: Experimental Evidence on the Demand for Migrant Workers, SSRN, 2020.

How does demand for migrant vs native workers change with price? We conduct an experiment with 56,000 Danish households (over 2 percent of all households in the country), who receive an advertisement from a cleaning company whose operators vary randomly across areas but meet the same quality standards and have equal customer ratings. When the operator has a migrant background, we find that demand is significantly lower than when the operator is a native. The gap, however, is highly sensitive to price, with demand for the migrant increasing steeply as the price falls. For an hourly pay close to the 25th percentile of the earnings distribution in similar occupations (24 USD per hour), demand for the migrant is one-fifth of the demand for the native. A 25 percent reduction in the price makes the gap in demand disappear.

PDF: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3685873

Castro Christiansen, Liza & Sabine Bacouel-Jentjens. The business case for diversity and inclusion in Denmark: A multi-level perspective from discourse to reality. (2022)

Castro Christiansen, Liza & Sabine Bacouel-Jentjens. The business case for diversity and inclusion in Denmark: A multi-level perspective from discourse to reality. Question(s) de management, 38(1), 2022, 137–149.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of the macro level factors that impact the way in which a company approaches and conceptualises diversity management (DM) in Denmark. A multi-level relational framework was adopted to uncover the contextual situation of DM in a Danish manufacturing company. Twenty semi-structured indepth interviews have been conducted and analyzed using the Gioia method. The findings show how diversity-related factors on the societal level favour the adoption of a business case rationale for DM on the organizational level of the case company. A deeply ingrained societal orientation of voluntarism (in contrast to a legal obligation) combined with low Power Distance seem to favour a “walk the talk”– attitude, which goes beyond the mere establishment of demographic diversity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/qdm.218.0137

Brøndum, Tine. “The curse of the refugee”: Narratives of slow violence, marginalization and non-belonging in the Danish welfare state. (2023) [PDF]

Brøndum, Tine. “The curse of the refugee”: Narratives of slow violence, marginalization and non-belonging in the Danish welfare state. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 96–112.

Drawing on narrative interviews with people who have recently or in the past fled to Denmark, this article examines experiences of being cast as refugees within the Danish asylum and integration bureaucracy. The analysis is situated within a social context formed simultaneously by Nordic exceptionalism and racial colour-blindness, and by increasing restrictions within Danish asylum and integration policy. Within this context, the article analyses narrative accounts of structural violence and racialization within three central sites of refugee management: namely the reception and asylum camps, encounters with municipal integration workers, and in contexts of schooling and employment. The analysis conveys intersubjective perspectives on how being labelled as a ‘refugee’ involves being racialized, managed and controlled and it argues that such forms of legally-sanctioned control measures can be understood as a slow violence that harms the lives of those seeking protection in Denmark. Finally, the article discusses how people labelled as ‘refugees’ respond to and oppose experiences of racism and control, and how such responses are often silenced in ways that further legitimize racism.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/141131

Hedegaard, Morten Størling & Jean-Robert Tyran. The Price of Prejudice. (2018). [PDF]

Hedegaard, M. S., & Tyran, J.-R. (2018). The Price of Prejudice. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(1), 40–63.

We present a new type of field experiment to investigate ethnic prejudice in the workplace. Our design allows us to study how potential discriminators respond to changes in the cost of discrimination. We find that ethnic discrimination is common but highly responsive to the “price of prejudice,” i.e., to the opportunity cost of choosing a less productive worker on ethnic grounds. Discriminators are on average willing to forego 8 percent of their earnings to avoid a coworker of the other ethnic type. The evidence suggests that animus rather than statistical discrimination explains observed behavior.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20150241

Spanger, Marlene, Constructing Victims and Criminals through the Racial Figure of ‘The Gypsy’. (2022)

Spanger, Marlene, Constructing Victims and Criminals through the Racial Figure of ‘The Gypsy’, in White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking, ed. by Kamala Kempadoo and Elena Shih (Routledge, 2022), pp. 154–69

Danish state anti-trafficking efforts have grown rapidly since 2002. From 2007, the Danish state has not only focused on victims in the sex industry; it has also paid attention to the formal labor market, setting out to identify labor migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The chapter explores how the racialized “Other” male European is established through the intersection of nationality and mobility articulated as “the gypsy.” The chapter argues that the racialized European historical figure of “the gypsy” reflects a strong symbol on who belongs and who does not belong in the European states representing the west. To show how this construction occurs, this chapter analyzes the narratives of Romanian male migrants describing their encounter with the Danish authorities. Focusing on the close entanglement of the empirical categorizations of “the victim” and “the criminal” during the identification process of CEE victims of human trafficking, the chapter analyzes the nexus of human trafficking, racialization and racism by asking: What kind of racialized victim and criminal representations do CEE migrant workers experience within the field of anti-trafficking? And how do these racialized representations stem from institutional racism?

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003162124-13/constructing-victims-criminals-racial-figure-gypsy-marlene-spanger

Tendler, Hannah, Deportation as Rescue: How Danish Society Responds to the Figure of the Migrant Sex Worker. (2022) [PDF]

Tendler, Hannah, Deportation as Rescue: How Danish Society Responds to the Figure of the Migrant Sex Worker, Culture and History: Student Research Papers, 6.2 (2022), 37–56

This article interrogates the conceptualisation of the figure of the migrant sex worker in Danish society. Reflecting on laws, policies and public attitudes towards sex work in the European context, it considers the tangible impacts on the rights of migrants selling sex. Delving deeper into public political debates on sex work, it finds that within Danish society, the migrant sex worker is rarely conceptualised as a worker. Instead, she is predominantly perceived to be a victim. This keeps the figure of the migrant sex worker in the realm of the exceptional and justifies the use of deportation as ‘rescue’.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/culturehistoryku/article/view/134567

Trolle, Astrid Krabbe, Transnationale Klasser. (2023) [PDF]

Trolle, Astrid Krabbe, Transnationale Klasser, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 75 (2023)

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In a Danish context, Filipino migrants are often positioned as working class laborers from the global South. Yet this political positioning of work migrants does not catch the complex processes of individual social positioning within a transnational space. This article shows how social class is shaped by 1) political mobilization, 2) positions of employment and social status, 3) processes of gendered intimacy, and 4) performances of embodiment. Throughout every aspect, individual and institutional religiosity creates alternative spaces where the established social classes become less important. The interviewed Filipino Christians apply individual narratives of religious endeavour to complement their social situation in Denmark.

DANSK RESUMÉ: Filippinske migranter bliver i en dansk kontekst ofte positioneret som ufaglært arbejdskraft fra det globale syd. Men den politiske positionering tager ikke højde for den ofte komplekse individuelle placering i et transnationalt socialt rum. Artiklen viser, hvordan social klasse er formet af 1) politisk mobilisering, 2) erhvervsmæssig placering og social status, 3) kønnede processer i intimsfæren, og 4) kropsliggørelse. I alle aspekter skaber både individuel og institutionel religiøsitet alternative rum, hvor de etablerede sociale klasser bliver mindre vigtige. De interviewede filippinske kristne kultiverer religiøse modnarrativer, der giver andre perspektiver på deres sociale situation i Danmark.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/rvt/article/view/137577

Marta Kirilova. All dressed up and nowhere to go: Linguistic, cultural and ideological aspects of job interviews with second language speakers of Danish. (2013) [PDF]

Marta Kirilova. All dressed up and nowhere to go: Linguistic, cultural and ideological aspects of job interviews with second language speakers of Danish. PhD Dissertation. University of Copenhagen. (2013)

This dissertation is a sociolinguistic, data-driven study of authentic job interviews with second language speakers of Danish. The job interviews are part of a Danish governmental initiative aimed particularly at immigrants and newcomers to Denmark, who are assumed to experience linguistic and cultural difficulties at the Danish labour market. The particular designs of the job interviews as well as the explicitly stated evaluations of language and culture create an unusual frame. On the one hand we deal with “traditional” job interviews as institutional gatekeeping instruments; on the other hand we face a tailored selection process meant to address the needs of the vulnerable. These contradictory practices produce certain tensions: although the job interviews in focus are meant to accomplish the target group’s special needs, they exemplify a practice in which the good intentions are all dressed up but have nowhere to go.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280899754_All_dressed_up_and_nowhere_to_go_Linguistic_cultural_and_ideological_aspects_of_job_interviews_with_second_language_speakers_of_Danish

Coming of Age in Exile: Health and Socio-Economic Inequalities in Young Refugees in the Nordic Welfare Societies. (2020) [PDF]

Coming of Age in Exile: Health and Socio-Economic Inequalities in Young Refugees in the Nordic Welfare Societies. NordForsk, 2020,

Coming of Age in Exile (CAGE) has been a multidisciplinary research project, funded by the Nordic Research Council (NordForsk) during 2015-2020, for more information see https://cage.ku.dk/. CAGE has been led by the Danish Research Centre for Migration, Ethnicity and Health (MESU) at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen and carried out in collaboration with researchers at the Migration Institute of Finland, Turku; the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS), Oslo; the University of South-Eastern Norway, University of Bergen, University of Gothenburg, and the Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS), Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet. 

During the last fifty years, the number of people moving to the Nordic countries has increased. From the 1970s onwards, a large part of non-Nordic immigration has consisted of refugees and their families. Children below 18 years of age comprise a sizable proportion of refugee immigrants, i.e. 25-35% of the refugees in the Nordic countries, and about twice as many when children born in exile are also included. In welfare typologies, the Nordic countries are often considered as similar in terms of their welfare state policies, but there are also important differences between countries in terms of immigration policy and economic context. The Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), a comparative policy analysis tool used by the European Union, has shown that during the period in which the CAGE study was conducted, Denmark ranked far behind the other Nordic countries, with more restrictive integration policies related to financial support, family reunification, and possibilities for naturalisation. Key economic factors also differ considerably between countries, with Sweden and Finland having had higher rates of youth unemployment during recent decades. The Nordic countries, with their excellent national registers, provide a unique arena for comparative studies of refugee children and youth in order to obtain an understanding of contextual factors in the reception countries for the integration of young refugees. 

The aim of the CAGE project has been to investigate inequalities in education, labour market participation, and health during the formative years in young refugees, and how they relate to national policies and other contextual factors. CAGE has used a mixed methods strategy built around a core of cross-country comparative quantitative register studies in national cohorts of refugees who were granted residency as children (0-17 years) during 1986-2005 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with follow-up until 2015. These quantitative register studies have been complimented with policy analyses and qualitative studies of key mechanisms involved in the development of these inequalities.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ketil_Eide/publication/348357687_CAGE_Final_Report_2015-2020/links/5ffa113692851c13feffbbe2/CAGE-Final-Report-2015-2020.pdf.

Brodmann, Stefanie, and Javier G. Polavieja. ‘Immigrants in Denmark: Access to Employment, Class Attainment and Earnings in a High-Skilled Economy’. (2011) [PDF]

Brodmann, Stefanie, and Javier G. Polavieja. ‘Immigrants in Denmark: Access to Employment, Class Attainment and Earnings in a High-Skilled Economy’. International Migration, vol. 49, no. 1, 2011, pp. 58–90.

This study examines employment access, class attainment, and earnings among native-born and first-generation immigrants in Denmark using Danish administrative data from 2002. Results suggest large gaps in employment access between native-born Danes and immigrants, as well as among immigrant groups by country of origin and time of arrival. Non-Western immigrants and those arriving after 1984 are at a particular disadvantage compared to other immigrants, a finding not explained by education differences. Immigrants are more likely to be employed in unskilled manual jobs and less likely to be employed in professional and intermediate-level positions than native-born Danes, although the likelihood of obtaining higher-level positions increases as immigrants’ time in Denmark lengthens. Class attainment and accumulated work experience explain a significant portion of native-immigrant gaps in earnings, but work experience reduces native-immigrant gaps in class attainment for lower-level positions only. The Danish “flexicurity” model and its implications for immigrants living in Denmark are discussed.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00608.x.

PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00608.x.

Nielsen, Helena Skyt, Michael Rosholm, Nina Smith, and Leif Husted. ‘Qualifications, Discrimination, or Assimilation? An Extended Framework for Analysing Immigrant Wage (2004) [PDF]

Nielsen, Helena Skyt, Michael Rosholm, Nina Smith, and Leif Husted. ‘Qualifications, Discrimination, or Assimilation? An Extended Framework for Analysing Immigrant Wage Gaps’. Empirical Economics, vol. 29, no. 4, Dec. 2004, pp. 855–883.

In this paper, we analyze immigrant wage gaps and propose an extension of the traditional wage decomposition technique, which is a synthesis from two strains of literature on ethnic/immigrant wage differences, namely the ‘assimilation literature’ and the ‘discrimination literature’. We estimate separate wage equations for natives and a number of immigrant groups using panel data sample selection models. Based on the estimations, we find that the immigrant wage gap is caused by a lack of qualifications and incomplete assimilation, and that a large fraction of that gap would disappear if only immigrants could find employment and thus accumulate work experience.

doi:10.1007/s00181-004-0221-9.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-004-0221-9.

Spanger, Marlene, and Sophia Dørffer Hvalkof. Migranters mobilitet: Mellem kriminalisering, menneskehandel og udnyttelse på det danske arbejdsmarked. (2020) [PDF]

Spanger, Marlene, and Sophia Dørffer Hvalkof. Migranters mobilitet: Mellem kriminalisering, menneskehandel og udnyttelse på det danske arbejdsmarked. Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2020.

Udnyttelse af arbejdsmigranter er et udbredt fænomen på det danske arbejdsmarked indenfor en række brancher som gartnerier, landbrug, byggeri, butik og rengøring. Ofte er migranterne ansat i midlertidige ufaglærte stillinger. Under hvilke forhold arbejder migranterne? Hvordan finder rekruttering af arbejdsmigranterne sted? Hvilke aktører er involveret i rekruttering og ansættelse af migranterne? Bogen kaster lys over migranternes arbejdsforhold og migrationsproces gennem analytiske greb som prekaritet og mobilitet.  I den sidste del af bogen vendes blikket mod den nationale indsats mod men­neske­han­del.

Myndighederne og fagforeningen forstår udnyttelse af arbejdsmigranter som ’tvangsarbejde’ og ’social dumping’, men gennem det sidste årti har arbejdsmigration fået myndighedernes bevågenhed gennem den nationale handlingsplan mod men­ne­ske­han­del. Det betyder, at nogle af de migranter, der har været udsat for ar­bejds­ud­nyt­tel­se, bliver af myn­dig­he­der­ne identificeret som ofre for men­ne­ske­han­del. Spørgsmålet er om denne politiske strategi sikrer migranters arbejds- og men­nes­ke­ret­tig­he­der.  Migranters mobilitet – mellem kriminalisering, menneskehandel og udnyttelse på det danske arbejdsmarked bygger på interviews med migranter, rekrutteringsfirmaer og myndigheder. Bogen undersøger, hvordan arbejdsmigranter ikke kun presses af arbejdsmarkedets dynamikker, men også hvordan migrationspolitikker er med til at presse migranter ud i prekære situationer.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/migranters-mobilitet-mellem-kriminalisering-menneskehandel-og-udn

https://aauforlag.dk/shop/boeger/migranters-mobilitet-mellem-kriminalisering-m.aspx.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/348073070/Migranters_mobilitet_OA.pdf

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. (2017) [PDF]

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 4, De Gruyter Open, Dec. 2017, pp. 251–259.

In investigating global and regional care chains, scholars have traditionally adopted a sociological bottom–up approach, but more attention has recently been focussed on the role of the state. Despite this new attention to states and how they condition care chains, the existing frameworks cannot grasp the complexity of potential struggles and tensions within states and at the various state levels. In outlining a broad and tentative analytical framework for exploration of the role of the state in shaping global care chains, this theoretical article combines feminist state theory, discursive policy analysis and multi-level governance theories. Paying attention to the role of the state, we focus on the framing of policy problems that are important for care chains and on potential tensions between different framings within a state and across the different state levels. We argue that these framings should be investigated in both receiving and sending states.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/rethinking-global-care-chains-through-the-perspective-of-heteroge.

PDF: 10.1515/njmr-2017-0029.

Li, Jin Hui, Louise Yung Nielsen, Marlene Spanger, and Lene Myong. ‘De andre tegn på kroppen’. (2019) [PDF]

Li, Jin Hui, Louise Yung Nielsen, Marlene Spanger, and Lene Myong. ‘De andre tegn på kroppen’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, vol. 28, no. 1–2, Foreningen for Kønsforskning, Oct. 2019, pp. 99–108.

Dette essay udspringer af vores erfaringer med at blive forvekslet med hinanden i konteksten af dansk akademia. At blive forvekslet er selvfølgelig ikke en erfaring, der er forbeholdt østasiatiske kroppe som vores. Vores afsæt er den racialiserende forveksling, som produceres gennem et hvidt akademisk blik, der både udvisker forskellighed og bestemmer hvilke former for forskellighed, der skal tillægges vægt og betydning. Vi anvender dermed forvekslingerne som en indgang til at reflektere over, hvordan race og hvidhed fungerer som organiserende principper i akademia, og på hvilke måder forskellige former for racialiseringsprocesser gør sig gældende i vores arbejdsliv.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116120.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116120

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Schooling the Muslim Family: The Danish School System, Foreign Workers, and Their Children from the 1970s to the Early 1990s’. (2019)

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Schooling the Muslim Family: The Danish School System, Foreign Workers, and Their Children from the 1970s to the Early 1990s’. in Family, Values, and the Transfer of Knowledge in Northern Societies, 1500-2000, Eds. Ulla Aatsinki, Johanna Annola, and Mervi Kaarninen, New York: Routledge, 2019, 283–299. vbn.aau.dk,

Since the 1970s, the Danish educational politics has handled children of labor migrants from the global South as an object of and a specific problem to schooling, describing these children through their parents; more specifically through their parents’ relation to labor market and through what was perceived as their special behavior and mentality, the latter two often focusing on “traditions” (1970s), religion in relation to “culture” (especially since the 1980s) and “values” (since the 1990s). The chapter explores how school authorities and professionals understood and developed pedagogical strategies which on the one hand saw the parents as a central problem for and central explanation of their children’s school behavior, and on the other hand regarded migrant parents as a resource in order to diversify curriculum and schooling.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/schooling-muslim-family-mette-buchardt/e/10.4324/9780429022623-14

Jensen, Peter Hoxcer. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike: The History of Black Labor in the Danish West Indies 1848-1916. (1998)

Jensen, Peter Hoxcer. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike: The History of Black Labor in the Danish West Indies 1848-1916. Christiansted, St. Croix: Antilles Press, 1998.

This book appears at a time when there is tremendous local, regional and international interest in 19th century emancipation in the West Indies. That event occurred in the U.S. Virgin Islands – the erstwhile Danish West Indies – on July 3, 1848. Peter Hoxcer Jensen’s fascinating new book takes up where the story of slavery leaves off and where the hard road to freedom begins. Employing previously unused materials form Danish archival and administrative sources, Jensen traces the ex-slaves’ journey from servitude, through neo-serfdom and revolt on the sugar- and cotton-producing estates where they had previously been slaves, to their emergence as an autonomous labor movement in the early 20th century. In the middle years of World War I, the disenfranchised laborers formed a labor union and struggled for recognition from the colonial government and the plantocracy, both of which continued to regard them narrowly through the distorting lens of race, color and class interests. The successful strike of 1916 played a significant role in the development of a cohesive labor movement, the nurturing of local leadership, the granting of freedom of the press and, eventually, the sale of the Danish islands to the United States in 1917. Jensen has provided us with the first scholarly study of this important period, in a treatment that is both broad and deep. From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike is destined to take its rightful place alongside earlier ground-breaking works of Waldemar Westergaard, Isaac Dookhan, N. A. T. Hall, C. G. A. Oldendorp, and John Knox as an original, seminal study that advances Virgin Islands and Caribbean historiography.

https://antillespressvi.com/serfdom-fireburn-strike/

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, Mette Kirstine Tørslev, Kathrine Vitus, and Kristina Weibel. The Geography of (Anti-) Racism and Tolerance: Local Policy Responses, Discrimination and Employment in Denmark. (2011) [PDF]

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, Mette Kirstine Tørslev, Kathrine Vitus, and Kristina Weibel. The Geography of (Anti-) Racism and Tolerance: Local Policy Responses, Discrimination and Employment in Denmark. Working paper produced within the TOLERANCE project, 2011, pp. 57–110,

Summary of part 1:

Although ethnic minorities’ participation in the Danish labour market has increased over the last years, a strong focus rests on particularly young ethnic minority men, who tend to drop out of school and have lower labour market participation. Danish research reveals different barriers to the labour market for ethnic minority youth; e.g. lack of language skills; lack of knowledge about the labour market; professionals ́ clientelisation focusing on problems rather than on skills, discrimination and expectances of discrimination.

In 2010 the Ministry of Integration launched a new ‘Action plan on ethnic equal treatment and respect for the individual’ focusing on information disseminating campaigns and monitoring of discrimination. The municipality of Copenhagen aims at counteracting discrimination and improve equal opportunities among citizens, focusing on three areas: documentation, information and handling of cases of discrimination. Authorities distinguish between objective/factual discrimination and subjective/experienced, but they remain reluctant to acknowledge subjective discrimination referring to it as a matter of feelings.

The young ethnic minority men in this case study tell about job-seeking and being confronted with stereotypes of ethnic minority men as violent, criminal and dangerous, and they experience a need to perform better than everybody else in order to get a job or get accepted. Thus, they indicate experiences of what can be labelled ‘Everyday racism’ that connects structural forces of racism with routine situations in everyday life. While the social street workers also see discrimination and racism as a barrier to 58employment, they view the young men’s social marginalization and lacking knowledge about cultural and social codes on the labour market as the main barrier. Not knowing basic written and unwritten rules at the workplace is, according to the social street workers, a common cause of conflicts and misunderstandings, and the youth tend to be ‘over sensitive.’ The professionals thus recognize that structural discrimination exists, but they seem to perceive discrimination as potential self-inflicted. This ambiguity reflects the general caution with defining and recognizing problems as related to discrimination. Thus, diverse perceptions and understandings exists and a continuously discursive struggle goes on: are ethnic minorities objectively discriminated against at the labour market, or do their difficulties in finding and keeping a job rest on self-inflicted reasons like their attitude/behaviour or lack of education and relevant networks? In these struggles it becomes a matter of arguing for the authenticity of one’s own subjective experiences and accounts of race relations, while de-legitimizing the truthfulness of other discourses

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathrine_Vitus/publication/262009770_Jensen_TG_Schmidt_G_T_Torslev_MT_Vitus_K_Weibel_K_2011_The_geography_of_anti-racism_and_tolerance_local_policy_responses_discrimination_and_employment_in_Denmark_The_Danish_National_Centre_for_Social_/links/55717cc108ae679887327c3d.pdf

Jørgensen, Martin Bak, and Trine Lund Thomsen. ‘“Needed but Undeserving”: Contestations of Entitlement in the Danish Policy Framework on Migration and Integration’. (2018)

Jørgensen, Martin Bak, and Trine Lund Thomsen. ‘“Needed but Undeserving”: Contestations of Entitlement in the Danish Policy Framework on Migration and Integration’. Diversity and Contestations over Nationalism in Europe and Canada, Eds. John Erik Fossum, Riva Kastoryano, and Birte Siim, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2018, 337–364.

This chapter investigates how entitlement is being narratively framed through contestations and negotiations in the policy regimes on labour migration. The chapter focuses particularly on the case of Denmark. It has been argued that the Nordic welfare states can be characterised as expressions of a universal welfare state; however, when it comes to the Nordic immigration regimes, there is less similarity. Contrary to studies emphasising the role of right-wing populist parties, our claim is that we find a decreasing level of contestation among the political parties and increasing support of welfare chauvinism. Furthermore, the chapter argues that we have seen an increased culturalisation becoming the basis for entitlement and access and thus creating new stratifications of exclusion and inclusion.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58987-3_13.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58987-3_13.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, Indian Indenture in the Danish West Indies, 1863-1873.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, Indian Indenture in the Danish West Indies, 1863-1873. Springer International Publishing AG. 2018.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Denmark’s solitary experiment with Indian indentured labor on St. Croix during the second half of the nineteenth century.  The book focuses on the recruitment, transportation, plantation labor, re-indenture, repatriation, remittances and abolition of Indian indentured experience on the island. In doing so, Roopnarine has produced a compelling narrative on Indian indenture. The laborers challenged and responded accordingly to their daily indentured existence using their cultural strengths to cohere and co-exist in a planter-dominated environment. Laborers had to create opportunities for themselves using their homeland customs without losing the focus that someday they would return home. Indentured Indians understood that the plantation system would not be flexible to them but rather they had to be flexible to plantation system. Roopnarine’s concise analysis has moved Indian indenture from the margin to mainstream not only in the historiography of the Danish West Indies, but also in the wider Caribbean where Indians were indentured.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319307091

Villadsen, Anders R., and Jesper N. Wulff. ‘Is the Public Sector a Fairer Employer? Ethnic Employment Discrimination in the Public and Private Sectors’. (2018)

Villadsen, Anders R., and Jesper N. Wulff. ‘Is the Public Sector a Fairer Employer? Ethnic Employment Discrimination in the Public and Private Sectors’. Academy of Management Discoveries, vol. 4, no. 4, Dec. 2018, pp. 429–448.

Increasing immigration is creating multiethnic labor markets in many countries. As convincingly identified by a growing body of research, substantial ethnic discrimination inhibits immigrants’ access to employment. The public sector may play an important role in creating labor market integration by setting a good example. Yet, little is known about sector differences in employment discrimination and whether public sector or- ganizations are more or less likely than private firms to ethnically discriminate against prospective employees. Both theory and empirical studies suggest that public sector organizations discriminate less. To investigate these phenomena, we conducted two studies. Study 1 is a field experiment designed to explicitly investigate private and public sector differences in ethnic discrimination in Danish organizations’ recruitment pro- cesses. Observing extensive discrimination favoring applicants with a Danish name, we find little evidence that the public sector is fairer in hiring decisions. Study 2, which is based on register data, highlights that sector differences and similarities in discrimina- tion are context contingent and depend on organizational size and location. We propose a framework of sector and context interaction to explain organizational differences in ethnic discrimination.

doi:10.5465/amd.2016.0029.

PDF: http://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amd.2016.0029.

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Ethnicized Ontologies : From Foreign Worker to Muslim Immigrant : How Danish Public Discourse Moved to the Right through the Question of Immigration’. (2006) [PDF]

Yilmaz, Ferruh. Ethnicized Ontologies : From Foreign Worker to Muslim Immigrant : How Danish Public Discourse Moved to the Right through the Question of Immigration. Dissertation. UC San Diego, 2006

My thesis, in one sentence, is that the entire political discourse in Denmark (and in many parts of Europe) has moved to the right through the debate on immigration in the last two decades. The left/right distinction is pushed to the background and a cultural one – the ‘Danish people’ /the Muslim immigrant – has come to the forefront as the main dividing line. This means that the redistribution of resources is discussed as a matter of ethnicity and culture rather than other types of social identifications (e.g. class or gender). In short, a new basis for identification has become hegemonic through the articulation of a new internal division based on culture. The hegemonic change was the result of the nationalist/ racist Right’s populist intervention in the mid 1980s. Large sections of society did not feel that their concerns and demands were represented by the political system. In an environment of such profound displacement, it was relatively easy for the populist right to point to immigration as the main threat to society (associated with the welfare system) and to articulate an antagonism between the people (silent majority) and the political and cultural elite that let immigration happen. The new hegemony is based on a culturalized ontology of the social. The (re)production of immigrants as a threatening force is maintained through a constant focus on cultural issues that are considered as anti-society. In many parts of Europe, cycles of moral panics are created around issues such as honor killings, gang rapes, animal slaughter, violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriages and headscarves. These issues produce repeatedly an unbridgeable divide between Muslim (immigrant) and Danish culture. The orientation towards these issues disperses various social and political actors along the antagonistic divide, often creating insolvable tensions and fractions within social movements. Reproducing a left/ right opposition – regardless of its particular content – is what is at stake. The answer to the populist vision of society is the construction of a new type of hegemony: the strategy or ideal for a future world should be the re- ontologization of the social.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8fd0g7h7.

Helgertz, J., P. Bevelander, and A. Tegunimataka. ‘Naturalization and Earnings: A Denmark–Sweden Comparison’. (2014) [PDF]

Helgertz, J., P. Bevelander, and A. Tegunimataka. ‘Naturalization and Earnings: A Denmark–Sweden Comparison’. European Journal of Population, vol. 30, no. 3, 2014, pp. 337–359.

The determinants and consequences of the naturalization of immigrants is a hot topic in the political debate in Europe. This article compares the effect of naturalization on the income attainment of immigrants in two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden, using longitudinal register data from 1986 and onward. Sweden is characterized by low obstacles to naturalization, and existing studies provide inconclusive evidence regarding the impact of naturalization on labor market outcomes. Denmark is instead characterized by higher barriers to naturalization, as well as a virtual inexistence of previous studies on the topic. Results, obtained through individual fixed-effect regression analysis, suggest similar effects in both countries. A consistent naturalization premium is detected for immigrants of Asian and African descent, but not for any other immigrant group. The similarity across contexts arguably questions the use of more stringent naturalization laws to promote the economic integration of immigrants.

PDF: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-014-9315-z