Tag: children and youth

Nexø, Sniff Andersen. ‘Særlige grønlandske forhold — Rum, ret og uægteskabelige børn i det koloniale Grønland’. (2013) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Nexø, Sniff Andersen. ‘Særlige grønlandske forhold … Rum, ret og uægteskabelige børn i det koloniale Grønland’. Historisk Tidsskrift, Sept. 2013.

Making allowance for the special conditions there, the ‘legally fatherless’ appeared before the Danish public in the spring of 2010 as they formed an association aiming at securing children born out of wedlock in Greenland legal rights towards their biological father equal to the ones bestowed on Danish children. The media framed their situation as the result of the colonial system having discharged Danish men from their responsibilities towards their illegitimate children in Greenland; that is, as a token of colonial discrimination. The following year, a historical investigation was organized in order to identify differences in the legal position of children born out of wedlock in Greenland and in Denmark over the period 1914-1974. The present article, authored by one of the contributors to the report, investigates the rules concerning children born out of wedlock in Greenland at three historical moments: The earliest rules of 1782; the first modern regulation from 1914; and the first post-colonial Children’s Act from 1962. What legal and colonial differences were at stake? How may one interpret the changing regulation? The analysis draws attention to shifting problematizations of the ‘illegitimate’ children, associated with changes in the colonial context. At the same time, however, it is argued that the regulation reflects a continuous colonial rationality by which the particularities of the colonial space came to legitimize fundamental differences between colony and metropolis, and between population categories in Greenland.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/historisktidsskrift/article/view/56593.

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Skolens produktion af muslimskhed’. (2016)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Skolens produktion af muslimskhed’. Unge Pædagoger, vol. 2016, no. 2, Foreningen Unge Pædagoger, 2016, pp. 67–73.

Folkeskolen har jævnligt været omdrejningspunkt for panik om relationer mellem ‘dansk kultur’ og ‘muslimsk kultur’, og skolefaget Kristendomskundskab har ofte – sammen med f.eks. spiseregler og badeforhæng – været på f.eks. mediernes dagsorden.

Men hvordan tager spørgsmål om ‘religion’/‘kultur’ sig ud hvis man studerer det i klasserummet og når det faglige indhold er defineret som religion? Hvilken viden om ‘religion’ produceres? Hvilke måder at være elev på? Og hvordan indgår panikker om ‘muslimskhed’ og ‘danskhed’/‘kristenhed’ i klasserummets taler og andre praktikker?

Denne artikel kaster lys over hvordan skolen også er med til at producere forestillinger om muslimer, og giver samtidig en indføring i hvordan denne viden er produceret forskningsmæssigt: Hvordan kan man via observation og interview undersøge hvad (her) religion bliver gjort til – hvordan det særligt tager sig ud – i skolen.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/skolens-produktion-af-muslimskhed

https://u-p.dk/vare/2016-nr-2/

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. ‘Making Children “Social”: Civilising Institutions in the Danish Welfare State’. (2014) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. ‘Making Children “Social”: Civilising Institutions in the Danish Welfare State’. Human Figurations, vol. 3, no. 1, Feb. 2014,

This article focuses on the role of child institutions in forming and disseminating ideas about what it means to be a civilised person in the Danish welfare state. The argument is that child institutions – kindergartens and schools – have been central to the integrating and civilising processes of the last century. To a wide extent these processes can be described as a state project, as the means and aims of childcare and education have been part and parcel of the expanding Danish welfare state. However, our ethnographic material from Danish kindergartens and schools shows that these child institutions are not merely executing a civilising project on behalf of the state, but have themselves been highly influential in defining and disseminating norms of civilised behaviour.

Full text: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.11217607.0003.103.

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. Civiliserende institutioner: Om idealer og distinktioner i opdragelse. (2012)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. Civiliserende institutioner: Om idealer og distinktioner i opdragelse. Aarhus Universitet, 2012.

I et velfærdssamfund som det danske er børneopdragelse ikke blot forældrenes opgave, men et anliggende for både samfund og stat. Den store opmærksomhed på børns trivsel og opførsel fra både medier og politikere fortæller om en udtalt bevågenhed og statslig prioritering. Denne samfundsinvolvering gør det vigtigt at se nærmere på børneinstitutionerne.  For hvad er det for mennesker og medborgere, man søger at opdrage børnene til at blive? Hvad er det for værdier for opførsel og omgang, der arbejdes med? – og stemmer de overens med den opdragelsespraksis, der foregår i familier? Hvilke interesser er institutionaliseringen af børneopdragelsen udtryk for, og hvilke konsekvenser har den for børnene og for samfundet?  Med afsæt i sociologen Norbert Elias civiliseringsbegreb forsøger denne bog at besvare disse spørgsmål. På baggrund af etnografiske feltarbejder i børnehaver, folkeskoler og familier, samt interviews med 4-16 årige børn, deres forældre, pædagoger og lærere præsenterer bogen en række analyser af institutionsliv og opdragelse. Formålet er at få indsigt i de idealer og distinktioner, der ligger i den institutionelle organisering af børns liv i det danske velfærdssamfund.

https://unipress.dk/udgivelser/c/civiliserende-institutioner/.

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. Children of the Welfare State. Civilising Practices in Schools, Childcare and Families. (2016)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura, and Eva Gulløv. Children of the Welfare State. Civilising Practices in Schools, Childcare and Families. Pluto Press, 2016,

This original ethnographic study looks at how children are ‘civilised’ within child institutions, such as schools, day care centres and families, under the auspices of the welfare state. As part of a general discussion on civilising projects and the role of state institutions, the authors focus on Denmark, a country characterised by the extent of time children use in public institutions from an early age. They look at the extraordinary amount of attention and effort put into the process of upbringing by the state, as well as the widespread co-operation in this by parents across the social spectrum.  Taking as its point of departure the sociologist Norbert Elias’ concept of civilising, Children of the Welfare State explores the ideals of civilised conduct expressed through institutional upbringing and examine how children of different age, gender, ethnicity and social backgrounds experience and react to these norms and efforts. The analysis demonstrates that welfare state institutions, though characterised by a strong egalitarian ideal, create distinctions between social groups, teach children about moral hierarchies in society and prompts them to identify as more or less civilised citizens of the state.

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745336046/children-of-the-welfare-state/. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745336046/children-of-the-welfare-state/.

Gilliam, Laura. De umulige børn og det ordentlige menneske: Identitet, ballade og muslimske fællesskaber blandt etniske minoritetsbørn. (2009)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura. De umulige børn og det ordentlige menneske: Identitet, ballade og muslimske fællesskaber blandt etniske minoritetsbørn. Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2009,

De umulige børn og det ordentlige menneske handler om etniske minoritetsbørns identitetserfaringer i den danske folkeskole. Den viser, at de etniske minoritetsbørn – stik imod skolens og lærernes intentioner om integration – oplever, at der er et skarpt skel mellem danskere og etniske minoriteter. Børnene føler, at den danske og andre nationale identiteter er hinandens modsætninger, og at de etniske minoritetsbørn laver ballade og er dårlige elever, hvorimod danske børn opfører sig pænt og er dygtige elever. Men hvorfor bliver nationale og religiøse identiteter så vigtige i folkeskolen? Og hvorfor ender især muslimske drenge i kategorien som skolens ballademagere?  Disse spørgsmål besvarer bogen gennem en analyse af skoleinstitutionen og børns identitetsopbygning omkring fællesskaber og kulturelle former. Her bliver det tydeligt, hvordan den danske folkeskoles ideal om ‘det ordentlige menneske’ bringer begreberne om køn, nationaliteter og religion ind i samspillet mellem børn og lærere på en måde, som ikke fremmer integration.

https://unipress.dk/udgivelser/u/umulige-b%C3%B8rn-og-det-ordentlige-menneske,-de/.

Gilliam, Laura. ‘Being a Good, Relaxed or Exaggerated Muslim. Religiosity and Masculinity in the Social World of Danish Schools.’ (2014) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura. ‘Being a Good, Relaxed or Exaggerated Muslim. Religiosity and Masculinity in the Social World of Danish Schools.’ Making European Muslims : Religious Socialization among Young Muslims in Scandinavia and Western Europe, Ed. Mark Sedgwick, New York: Routledge, 2014, 165–186.

https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/publications/being-a-good-relaxed-or-exaggerated-muslim(e57b5b46-465d-46a6-b7ce-6331d40bdff8).html

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318239752_Being_a_good_relaxed_or_exaggerated_Muslim_Religiosity_and_masculinity_in_the_social_world_of_Danish_schools

Gilliam, Laura. ‘Ballade Og Muslimsk Rettro Som Oppositionel Kulturel Form: Etniske Minoritetsdrenges Kulturkonstruktion i Skolen’. (2007) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Gilliam, Laura. ‘Ballade Og Muslimsk Rettro Som Oppositionel Kulturel Form: Etniske Minoritetsdrenges Kulturkonstruktion i Skolen’. Tidsskriftet Barn, vol. 25, Jan. 2007, pp. 59–76.

I den københavnske skoleklasse 4a oplever såvel etniske minoritetsbørn og etnisk danske børn at udlændinge, indvandrere og tilmed muslimer er ballademagere, og at danskere opfører sig godt og er dygtige elever. Lærerne opfatter også de etniske minoritetsdrenge i klassen som ballademagere, der tilmed går alt for meget op i religion. De forklarer drengenes adfærd som forårsaget af et problematisk kulturmøde mellem drengenes familiers hjem og den danske skole. Artiklen argumenterer i stedet for, at de etniske minoritetsdrenges ballade og religiøse rettro er kulturelle former, der langt hen ad vejen er konstrueret gennem deres erfaringer i skolen og med den magtrelation de her indgår i. At være muslimsk indvandrerdreng er blevet en oppositionel identitet, der finder sit kulturelle indhold gennem oppositionen til den danske identitet.

PDF: https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/BARN/article/view/3850.

Buchardt, Mette, and Christian Ydesen. ‘Testing the Culturally Deviant of the Welfare State: Greenlandic Children and the Children of Labour Migrants in Danish Minority Education, 1960-1970’. (2018)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette, and Christian Ydesen. ‘Testing the Culturally Deviant of the Welfare State: Greenlandic Children and the Children of Labour Migrants in Danish Minority Education, 1960-1970’. Assessment Cultures: Historical Perspectives, Eds. Cristina Alarcón López and Martin Lawn, Peter Lang D, 2018.

doi:10.3726/978-3-653-06867-2.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/19385.

Buchardt, Mette. ‘The “Culture” of Migrant Pupils: A Nation- and Welfare-State Historical Perspective on the European Refugee Crisis’. (2018)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette. ‘The “Culture” of Migrant Pupils: A Nation- and Welfare-State Historical Perspective on the European Refugee Crisis’. European Education, vol. 50, no. 1, Taylor & Francis, Jan. 2018, pp. 58–73.

Culture seems to function as a central explanation when refugees and other migrants are framed as a risk and a challenge in European and national politics across the member states, including educational politics. Based on the case of Denmark during the 1970s, the article unfolds how education historically has been an arena for the internal bordering of the nation in the context of a welfare state model by means of the category of culture.

doi:10.1080/10564934.2017.1394162.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10564934.2017.1394162.

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

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

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

Buchardt, Mette. Pedagogized Muslimness: Religion and Culture as Identity Politics in the Classroom. (2011)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette. Pedagogized Muslimness: Religion and Culture as Identity Politics in the Classroom. Waxmann Verlag, 2014.

Becoming Danish/Christian and becoming Muslim are skills that may be acquired in the secularized school system. This study explores how social structure and the politics of identity and knowledge in relation to religion intertwine when recontextualized in the classroom of the Danish comprehensive school post 9-11. Through close readings of what takes place at a classroom level in two Copenhagen schools, Pedagogized Muslimness provides insights into how the Nordic model of comprehensive schooling – in the (post-)welfare state – plays out in daily school life and with what effects. 

The book provides a deeper understanding of how knowledge is produced in school, and how school operates as an arena for the production and distribution of social difference. The good pupil is the pupil that speaks of her/himself, acting as a subject, or who, by confirming the teacher’s organizing of her/himself, accepts being made into an object upon which knowledge can be generated. Particularly overexposed are the pupils, whom the teachers identify as ‘Muslim’, something which draws on decades of casting this group of children as special objects of – as well as obstacles to – schooling. 

By the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the children of migrants came to be defined by their parents’ relation to the labor market: as ‘foreign workers’ in often unskilled jobs, associated with rural life and ‘traditional family patterns’, and characterized by what was seen as their (lack of) language skills. In the course of several moral panics around ‘Muslims’ and ‘Muslim children’, this focus has translated into a knowledge formation of culture/religion. The book shows how school-produced Muslimness, in the pedagogized social economy of the classroom, becomes a parameter of social class, higher as well as lower.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/p%C3%A6dagogiseret-muslimskhed-religion-og-kultur-som-identitetpolitik.

https://www.waxmann.com/waxmann-buecher/?tx_p2waxmann_pi2%5bbuchnr%5d=3143&tx_p2waxmann_pi2%5baction%5d=show

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Krisen set fra Klasserummet: Jyllandsposten-sagen og skolens produktion af “muslimskhed”’. (2011)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette. ‘Krisen set fra Klasserummet: Jyllandsposten-sagen og skolens produktion af “muslimskhed”’. En krise fra 2 vinkler : en samfundsvidenskabelig forskningsudstilling om Muhammed/Jyllandsposten-sagen, Ed. Tina Buchtrup Pipa, Kbh.: Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultetsbibliotek, Københavns Universitets Biblioteks- og Informationsservice, 2011.

Katalog over udstilling med 22 satiriske tegninger og 7 citater der omhandler krisen med Muhammed-tegningerne og Jyllands-posten. Udstillingen ser på krisen udfra 2 fagdiscipliner: antropologisk og samfundsvdienskabeligt. Ved at sammensætte to forskellige forskningsprojekter om det samme emne, forsøges der at give læseren og betragteren nye og flere vinkler på krisen.

https://bibliotek.dk/linkme.php?rec.id=870970-basis%3A28849117.

Buchardt, Mette. Identitetspolitik i klasserummet: ‘Religion’ og ‘kultur’ som viden og social klassifikation. Studier i et praktiseret skolefag. (2008) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Buchardt, Mette. Identitetspolitik i klasserummet: ‘Religion’ og ‘kultur’ som viden og social klassifikation. Studier i et praktiseret skolefag. Dissertation. University of Copenhagen, 2008.

This dissertation is a study of classroom curriculum that applies a combination of the sociology of education and the sociology of knowledge. More specifically, it is a study of identity politics (in the plural) associated with ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ as they unfold in the classroom in relation to knowledge production and social classification. Categories such as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Danish’ are thus sought deconstructed in a study of the classroom as a setting for knowledge production and production of social difference. What kinds of knowledge of religion are produced? What spaces for subjects/subjectivities? What ways to be a pupil? And how does ‘Muslim-ness’ and ‘Danishness’/‘Christian-ness’ enter into in the social economy of the classroom? The classroom is thus studied as a micropolitical arena for relations and politics regarding minorities and the majority and the ways in which they figure in the social economy of the classroom.   

The data material of the project is based on my observations of two delimited educational modules in the primary school subject Kristendomskundskab (literally: Knowledge about Christianity) at two different schools located in the same Copenhagen neighborhood. Both educational modules deal with several religions, particularly Christianity and Islam. The material consists of sound recordings of classroom speech, by systematic registrations focusing on turn-taking, by interviews with teachers and pupils and finally a questionnaire for the parents concerning information of a socioeconomic nature.   

The project’s perspective on the classroom is inspired by Basil Bernstein’s concepts of recontextualizing and pedagogic discourse as a way to conceptualize and study forms of knowledge as well as how they are reshaped and produced in school on the terms of the logic of the pedagogic field of practice. This Bernsteinian perspective on the educational system and curriculum makes up the overall framework of the dissertation in which I employ two parallel analytical strategies, i.e. one drawing on the concept of discursive regularity (Michel Foucault) – allowing me to analyze the production of the educational content – and the concepts of social space and field (Pierre Bourdieu), enabling me to analyze the ways in which agents are produced in the social economy of the classroom. The study of discursive regularity in relation to the formation of knowledge and subjects is concretized by the discourse analytical framework of sociolinguist Norman Fairclough through studies of linguistic practice, namely classroom conversation, while the Bourdieuian key concepts are concretized through studies of turn-taking practices and the categorization and acknowledgment practices of the teachers.   

 The dissertation links the study of the classroom as knowledge and subject production to a conception of societal ‘classes’ as production of social classification – practices of acknowledgment and non-acknowledgement that function in conjunction with possession of economic capital and capitals related to cultural education [Bildung]. The point is that ‘religion’/‘culture’ may be understood as clusters of knowledge, but also as subject-producing technologies coloring and forming bodies. Moreover, these knowledge clusters are simultaneously tinted by the social economy associated with the bodies of the agents as they are being transformed and produced in the social economy of the classroom.   

When the categorical cluster ‘religion’/‘culture’ is discussed from a perspective of social classification, it may be understood as something that does more than merely interact with social classification. These subject-generating knowledge clusters – themselves populated by subjects – related to ‘religion’/‘culture’ in the classroom curriculum constitute a productive and potent part of the social classification. In light of the concept of capitals, they are thus bound up with and have consequences for social distribution. Categories such as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Danish’/‘Christian’ are in themselves to be understood as a process of social classification and distribution. Thus, ‘religion’ may be understood as a class-producing practice having a vital institutional life in something that should not be perceived as a religious institution in the formal sense, but rather as a state institution and as such embedded in societal structuring.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/identitetspolitik-i-klasserummet-religion-og-kultur-som-viden-og-.

Horst, Christian, and Thomas Gitz‐Johansen. ‘Education of Ethnic Minority Children in Denmark: Monocultural Hegemony and Counter Positions’. (2010)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Horst, Christian, and Thomas Gitz‐Johansen. ‘Education of Ethnic Minority Children in Denmark: Monocultural Hegemony and Counter Positions’. Intercultural Education, vol. 21, no. 2, Routledge, Apr. 2010, pp. 137–151.

This paper explores the dominant approach to education of ethnic minorities in Denmark. Using the concept of hegemony and the political‐science distinction between monocultural and multicultural positions as approaches towards a situation of increasing linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity, the paper shows how a monocultural approach has become hegemonic in policy initiatives and legal documents. This hegemony is achieved by understanding ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversions from established norms in terms of deprivation. In this way, educational institutions and ‘majority society’ as such are protected from criticism and structural changes towards multiculturalism and the recognition of the linguistic and cultural rights of minority groups. Alternative and competing positions exist in the research literature in the field, but this literature has been excluded from the level of policy and public administration.

doi:10.1080/14675981003696271.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14675981003696271.

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘Coercive Concern: Nationalism, Liberalism, and the Schooling of Muslim Youth.’ (2016)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. Coercive Concern: Nationalism, Liberalism, and the Schooling of Muslim Youth. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016.

Many liberal-minded Western democracies pride themselves on their commitments to egalitarianism, the fair treatment of immigrants, and the right to education. These environments would seem to provide a best-case scenario for the reception of immigrant youth. But that is not always the case. Coercive Concern explores how stereotypes of Muslim immigrants in Western liberal societies flow through public schools into everyday interactions, informing how Muslim youth are perceived by teachers and peers. Beyond simply identifying the presence of racialized speech in schools, this book uncovers how coercive assimilation is cloaked in benevolent narratives of care and concern.  Coercive Concern provides an ethnographic critique of the ‘concern’ that animates integration policy in Danish schools. Reva Jaffe-Walter focuses on the experiences of Muslim youth at a public school where over 40% of the student body is of immigrant descent, showing how schools operate as sites of governance. These efforts are led by political leaders who promote national fears of immigrant take-over, by teachers in schools, and by everyday citizens who are concerned about ‘problems’ of immigration. Jaffe-Walter exposes the psychic and material costs immigrant youth endure when living in the shadow of social scrutiny, but she also charts a path forward by uncovering the resources these youth need to attain social mobility and success.

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24789

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda, Anne Ríos-Rojas, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Whose Race Problem? Tracking Patterns of Racial Denial in US and European Educational Discourses on Muslim Youth’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda, Anne Ríos-Rojas, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Whose Race Problem? Tracking Patterns of Racial Denial in US and European Educational Discourses on Muslim Youth’. Curriculum Inquiry, vol. 47, no. 3, Routledge, 2017, pp. 310–335.

In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators ‘in schools’ in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the languages and practices of national belonging and citizenship. Comparing ethnographic case studies in the United States, Denmark and Spain, the authors trace the nationalist storylines that serve to frame Muslim youth as particular kinds of racialized and ‘impossible subjects’. Across national contexts, the authors document similar, often almost verbatim, stories that educators narrated about the disjuncture between liberal ideals of the nation, and what they imagined to be true of Muslim im/migrant youth. They theorize that, despite differences in US and European approaches to immigration, there are consonances in the ways that Muslims are positioned as racialized Others across liberal democracies because of the very ways that western liberalism has constructed notions of individualism and tolerance. These seemingly benign discourses of liberalism in schools provide the conditions of possibility for schools’ imposition of exclusionary nationalist values while keeping a safe distance from charges of racism. Thus, we show how liberalism’s imbrication with nationalism, and its promotion of goals conceived of as inherently humanist and universal, occlude the racial logics that ultimately restrict human freedom for Muslim youth.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03626784.2017.1324736?journalCode=rcui20

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘“The More We Can Try to Open Them Up, the Better It Will Be for Their Integration”: Integration and the Coercive Assimilation of Muslim Youth’. (2017) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘“The More We Can Try to Open Them Up, the Better It Will Be for Their Integration”: Integration and the Coercive Assimilation of Muslim Youth’. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 2017, pp. 63–68. Crossref,

Capitalizing on national anxieties, right wing populist leaders promise to enforce national borders with new constellations of policies that regulate and exclude Muslim bodies. Using the theoretical tool of “technologies of concern” (Jaffe-Walter, 2016), this essay critiques how state security discourses operate through public schools. Drawing on ethnographic research with Muslim youth in a Danish public school and an analysis of European integration policies, the author analyzes how policies and practices that ostensibly support young people’s integration enact everyday violence and coercive assimilation. Highlighting the perspectives of the young people she worked with, the author argues that state efforts to transform Muslim students into acceptable subjects of the nation-state encouraged their alienation and marginalization.

doi:10.1080/15595692.2017.1288616.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/31710701/_The_More_We_Can_Try_to_Open_Them_Up_the_Better_It_Will_Be_for_Their_Integration_Integration_and_the_Coercive_Assimilation_of_Muslim_Youth

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘Ideal Liberal Subjects and Muslim “Others”: Liberal Nationalism and the Racialization of Muslim Youth in a Progressive Danish School’. (2019) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘Ideal Liberal Subjects and Muslim “Others”: Liberal Nationalism and the Racialization of Muslim Youth in a Progressive Danish School’. Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 22, no. 2, Routledge, Mar. 2019, pp. 285–300.

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.

doi:10.1080/13613324.2018.1468744.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/36581871/Ideal_liberal_subjects_and_Muslim_Others_liberal_nationalism_and_the_racialization_of_Muslim_youth_in_a_progressive_Danish_school

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘“Who Would They Talk about If We Weren’t Here?”: Muslim Youth, Liberal Schooling, and the Politics of Concern’. (2013) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jaffe-Walter, Reva. ‘“Who Would They Talk about If We Weren’t Here?”: Muslim Youth, Liberal Schooling, and the Politics of Concern’. Harvard Educational Review, vol. 83, no. 4, Dec. 2013, pp. 613–635.

With the growing number of immigrant youth moving into new communities and host nations across the globe (Suarez-Orozco, 2007), it is critical that we deepen our understanding of the ways in which schools enable either the civic engagement or the social marginalization of these young people. In this article Reva Jaffe-Walter presents the results of an ethnographic case study of Muslim students and their teachers in a Danish secondary school. Her findings reveal how liberal educational discourses and desires to offer Muslim immigrant students a better life can slide into processes of everyday exclusion in schools. Jaffe-Walter theorizes that immigrants in liberal democracies face technologies of concern—that is, policies and practices that champion the goals of fostering the engagement and social incorporation of immigrant students while simultaneously producing notions of these youth as Other, justifying practices of coercive assimilation (Foucault, 1977; Ong, 1996). She argues that beyond just producing negative representations, technologies of concern position youth within hierarchical schemes of racial and cultural difference that complicate their access to educational resources in schools (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Ong, 1996). This article has implications for the education and social integration of Muslim immigrants within liberal societies, as it reveals the troubling persistence of exclusion buried within practices of concern.

https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.83.4.b41012p57h816154.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/5628702/_Who_would_they_talk_about_if_we_werent_here_Muslim_Youth_Liberal_Schooling_and_the_Politics_of_Concern

Shirazi, Roozbeh, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Conditional Hospitality and Coercive Concern: Countertopographies of Islamophobia in American and Danish Schools’. (2020) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Shirazi, Roozbeh, and Reva Jaffe-Walter. ‘Conditional Hospitality and Coercive Concern: Countertopographies of Islamophobia in American and Danish Schools’. Comparative Education, Sept. 2020, pp. 1–21.

In this article, we explore how locally situated educational practices and policies aimed at inclusion and integration may contribute to racialised exclusion for students. Our analysis brings together two ethnographic studies of how minoritised Muslim youth navigate secondary schooling in Denmark and the US. Our cases illustrate how assumptions held by school staff toward the youth in our studies were rooted in both Islamophobic tropes and deeply held nationalist beliefs about the benevolence of the US and Denmark. Cindi Katz’s notion of ‘countertopography’ is critical to our argument that Islamophobia is productive of similar practices of surveillance and exclusion across disparate educational settings. As an analytical framework, countertopography opens important possibilities for critical and comparative qualitative inquiry, with specific promise for highlighting how seemingly dissimilarly educational spaces may be imbued with similar social meanings, and how these meanings are constituted by recurring unequal social relations between individuals and groups therein.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03050068.2020.1812234

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roozbeh_Shirazi/publication/344541667_Conditional_hospitality_and_coercive_concern_countertopographies_of_Islamophobia_in_American_and_Danish_schools/links/5f9ad817a6fdccfd7b884377/Conditional-hospitality-and-coercive-concern-countertopographies-of-Islamophobia-in-American-and-Danish-schools.pdf.

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’ (2011) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’. Qualitative Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec. 2011, pp. 63–78.

The article examines the potentials of the concept of othering to describe identity formation among ethnic minorities. First, it outlines the history of the concept, its contemporary use, as well as some criticisms. Then it is argued that young ethnic minority men in Denmark are subject to intersectional othering, which contains elements of exoticist fascination of the other. On the basis of ethnographic material, it is analysed how young marginalized ethnic minority men react to othering. Two types of reactions are illustrated: 1) capitalization on being positioned as the other, and 2) refusing to occupy the position of the other by disidentification and claims to normality. Finally, it is argued that the concept of othering is well suited for understanding the power structures as well as the historic symbolic meanings conditioning such identity formation, but problematic in terms of agency.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/5510

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]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

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

Khawaja, Iram. To belong everywhere and nowhere: fortællinger om muslimskhed, fællesgørelse og belonging. (2010) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Khawaja, Iram. To belong everywhere and nowhere: fortællinger om muslimskhed, fællesgørelse og belonging. Roskilde: Dissertation. Roskilde Universitet, 2010.

Denne afhandling tager udgangspunkt i en interesse i at udforske spørgsmåletom, hvordandet er muligt at blive til som et ungtmuslimsk subjekti religiøse fællesskaber  i  København.  Dette  spørgsmål  undersøges  på  grundlag  af  en ambition  om  at lade  de  unges  egne stemmer  og fortællinger  komme  i forgrunden  i  forhold  til  de ofte  stereotypiserende  og  andetgørende  images, dereksisterer ommuslimer.Det gælder særligt unge muslimer, der tager del i religiøse    fællesskaber,    hvilket    fordrer    en    nærmere    undersøgelse    af betydningen  af  fællesskab.Det  sammenholdes  med  etfokus  på  belonging. Afhandlingen er på således bygget op om en multiaksial opmærksomhed  på, fælleshed, belonging og muslimskhedudfra en todelt interesse i: 1.Empirisk  udforskning  af  unge  muslimers  levede  liv  i  forhold  til  et fokus  på,  hvordan  de  positionerer  sig  i  forskellige  fællesgørende konteksterog  i  denne  sammenhæng  fortæller  sig  selv  frem  som muslimske subjekter.2.Teoretisk-begrebslig  udvikling,  der  kan  rykke  ved  og  tilbyde  nye måder at konceptualisere muslimskhed, fælleshed og belonging.  Det multiaksiale udgangspunkt og dets forskellige afgrænsninger ekspliciteres i kapitel 1. Afhandlingen  er  grundet  i  en poststrukturalistisk  og  socialkonstruktionistisk informeret  optik,  der  sammenlæser  et  foucauldiansk  og  deleuziansk perspektiv  medkonkrete  begreber  somf.eks.  kontekst,  fælleshed  og positionering.De metateoretiske og begrebslige aspekter ekspliciteres i kapitel 2, men der arbejdes videre med dem i afhandlingens analytiske læsninger.Det empiriske omdrejningspunkt for afhandlingen, som beskrives i kapitel 3, erbaseret  på deltagerobservationer  i  udvalgte  religiøse  foreninger  og fællesheder i København, samt kvalitative interviews af unge muslimer, med forskellige  kønnede,  etniske  og  racialetilhørsforhold. De  analysestrategiske greb  gøres  synlige  i  kapitel  4,  og  det  bliver  her  tydeligt,at  analysen struktureres om forskellige destabiliserende læsninger.  Afhandlingens  analyse  ersåledes  bygget  op  om som  et  rhizommed forskellige  akser  og  læsninger, som  er delt  op  i  tre  centralekapitler,  der  340henholdsvis  gør  fælleshed(kap.  5),  subjektiveringsbevægelser (kap.  6) og belonging(kap.7)til forgrund. Kapitlerne  er  vævet  sammen  af  forskellige  teoretisk-begrebslige  bevægelser, og  det  er  således  muligt  at  se  multiple  sammenhængende  overskridende bevægelser fra et klassisk fællesskabsbegreb til konceptet om fællesgørelse, fra intersektionalitet til transsektionalitet samt bevægelsen fra positionering til et translokalt  og  kropsligt  perspektiv  på  belonging.  Disse  bevægelser  udføres bl.a. på    grundlag    af    dynamiske    sammenlæsninger    af    feministiske, postkoloniale  og  poststrukturalistiske  perspektiver  på  kropslighed,  desire, translokalitet og diaspora, og kan mere generelt relateres til en metateoretisk bevægelse fra en konstruktionistisk til en post-konstruktionistisk optik.    De begrebslige  overskridelser  er forbundet  med  de  empirisk  fokuserede analytiske læsninger,  som peger på  en  forståelse  af muslimskhed som en flerstrenget proces, der bl.a. er flettet sammen af:

·Multisituerede    fællesgørende    bevægelser:    De    unge    muslimer konstruerer fælleshed på forskellige måder og anvender muslimskhed som central akse i konstruktionen af en ”naturlig” fælleshed  om  at være  muslimske  andre.  Ofte  er  fællesheden  om  at  være  muslimske andre forbundet med en etnisk andetgørende fælleshed. Fællesgørelse konstrueres    i    denne    sammenhæng    igennem    subjektiverende bevægelser og en desire for belonging og genkendelse. ·Intersektionelle og transsektionelle subjektiveringsbevægelser, der går i retning af en selvfremstilling som passende og intelligibelt religiøst andet  subjekt,  men  som  ofte  sammenlæser  etnisk  andethed  med religøs  andethed.  Det  er  forbundet  med  forskellige  muligheder  for kropsligt  at  forhandle  sin  synlige/ikke-synlige  muslimskhed  og andethed i forhold til forskelligedisciplinerende blikke. ·Diasporiske  konstruktioner  af  hjem  og  belonging,  der  fører  til  nye nye  måder at  forhandledistinktionerne  mellem  hjemland,  hjem  og belonging. Bestemte  lokationer,  subjektpositioner  og  kategorier investeres med hjemliggørende desires. Hjem er følgelig ikke et sted men en desire for belonging.Muslimskhed  konceptualiseres  således  som  en  decentraliseret  bevægelse,  der er  flettet  sammen  af  de  unges  forskellige  gørelser af  fælleshed,  belonging  og subjektivering.Præmisserne forudviklingen og fremskrivningen af disse teoretisk-analytiske og empirisk-analytiske læsningereksploreres i kapitel 8, hvor der sættesfokus på  forskerpositionering.  Forskerpositionering  diskuteres  som  konkrete  341positioneringsmuligheder  som  kvindeligt  og  etnisk  kropsmarkeret  religiøs andet forskerubjekt i et politiseretforskningsfelt.  De midlertidige analytiske lukninger opsummeres i kapitel 9, hvor der samles op på centrale teoretisk-begrebslige og empiriske snit fra de unges levede liv.  Det bliver i denne forbindelse tydeligt, at afhandlingen tilbyder et rhizomatisk perspektiv  på muslimskhed som  en decentraliseret  bevægelse,som er forbundet  med  og  defineret  af  deunges  forskellige  gørelser  af  fælleshed, belonging  og  subjektivering.  Det  kommer bl.a.  kommer  til  udtryk  i  nye  og transsektionelle  betydningskonstellationer  som  f.eks.  konstruktioner  af  en ”dansk  muslimskhed”,  en  kosmopolitisk  hjemliggørelse  af  verden,  og konstruktionen af muslimskhed som translokalt hjemog multirettet desire.

https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/to-belong-everywhere-and-nowhere-fort%C3%A6llinger-om-muslimskhed-f%C3%A6ll

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/31322749/To_belong_everywhere_and_nowhere_fort%C3%A6llinger_om_muslimskhed_f%C3%A6llesskab_og_belonging.