Tag: civil society

Everyday Activism and Resistance By Minority Women in Denmark. (2020) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Rognlien, Louise, and Sophia Kier-Byfield. Everyday Activism and Resistance By Minority Women in Denmark. Conjunctions, vol. 7, no. 1, July 2020, pp. 1–16.

Stereotypes of minority women, and in particular Muslim women, are being used to push certain groups to the margins of Danish society, both discursively and geographically. Focusing on two case studies working in the social periphery, Andromeda, 8220 and Kvinder i Dialog, this article illuminates how the same stereotypes are used in the production of counternarratives that resist stigma and divisive policies. Despite the media attention that the new laws in Denmark such as “ghetto” reforms and masking ban have received, less attention has been paid to examples of resistance and the fight for political subjectivity. By further developing and employing postcolonial and feminist theory in a Danish context, this article addresses this gap and embarks on an analysis of minority women’s cultural activism against homogenization.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/tjcp.v7i1.119854.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342709746_Everyday_Activism_and_Resistance_By_Minority_Women_in_Denmark

Chatzopoulos, Ioannis. Sport, migration and integration in Denmark: Local political responses and policies in Copenhagen. (2022).

~ mortenstinus

Chatzopoulos, Ioannis. Sport, migration and integration in Denmark: Local political responses and policies in Copenhagen. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 14(1), 2022, 53–69.

Denmark in recent years has seen a significant increase in immigration. The topic has become a major political issue, due mainly to the rise of far-right political parties that advocate not only for a more restrictive immigration policy, but also for an assimilation strategy for those migrants currently resident in the country. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the aim of this article is to analyse the role of sport policy in Copenhagen as an instrument for the social integration of migrants between 2010 and 2018. This paper focuses on female immigrants and women-only swimming, exploring the impact on policy of the interactions between national, municipal and sports club policy actors. The main findings of the research are: a) sport was identified in Copenhagen as an important vehicle for the inclusion of recent migrants into communal associationalist life and their introduction to Danish societal values and norms; b) the Municipality of Copenhagen was granted by central government considerable autonomy in interpreting their responsibilities and collaborated closely with sports clubs in the design and delivery of sports programmes related to immigrants; c) two competing advocacy coalitions were identified, one favouring inclusion through assimilation and the other integration through multiculturalism; d) the assimilationist coalition was composed of centre-right and far-right political parties. As these parties controlled the municipal sport department, it was the sports clubs that pursued a multicultural policy; and e) the issue of gender-segregated swimming was a focal issue for disputes over approaches to integration.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2021.1996436

Johansen, Mette-Louise E., Intimate Belonging—Intimate Becoming: How Police Officers and Migrant Gang Defectors Seek to (Re)Shape Ties of Belonging in Denmark. (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Johansen, Mette-Louise E., Intimate Belonging—Intimate Becoming: How Police Officers and Migrant Gang Defectors Seek to (Re)Shape Ties of Belonging in Denmark, Genealogy, 6.2 (2022), 40

This article examines the ways that Danish gang exit programs engage police officers and gang defectors in a pervasive work on belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. In urban Denmark, the majority of gang exit candidates are of ethnic-minority background and form part of the street-gang environment in marginalized migrant neighborhoods. This is an intimate social environment constituted by diasporic kinship networks, where gang formations are entangled with kinship formations. Hence, when gang defectors leave their gang, they also often leave their family and childhood home for a life in unfamiliar places and positions. As I show, gang desistance is thus a highly dilemmatic process in which gang defectors find themselves “unhinged” from meaningful social and kinship relationships and in search of new ways of embedding themselves into a social world. Based on an ethnographic study of gang exit processes in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, this article shows how police officers and gang defectors seek to (re)shape ties of belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. The process, I argue, illuminates the intimate aspect of the notion of belonging, in which kin and state relatedness is deeply rooted in interpersonal spaces and relationships.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020040

Kammersgaard, Tobias, Thomas Friis Søgaard, Torsten Kolind, and Geoffrey Hunt, ‘Most Officers Are More or Less Colorblind’: Police Officers’ Reflections on the Role of Race and Ethnicity in Policing. (2022)

~ mortenstinus

Kammersgaard, Tobias, Thomas Friis Søgaard, Torsten Kolind, and Geoffrey Hunt, ‘Most Officers Are More or Less Colorblind’: Police Officers’ Reflections on the Role of Race and Ethnicity in Policing, Race and Justice, 2022, 21533687221127445

Several studies worldwide have demonstrated that ethnic minorities are more likely to be stopped, questioned and searched by the police. In this paper, we explore how police officers themselves discuss and make sense of ethnic disparities in police stops. Based on interviews with 25 police officers in two police precincts in Denmark the paper illustrates how officers actively reflect on the (un)importance of ethnicity for policing. Findings point to how the officers both rejected that ethnicity directly mattered for who they chose to stop, as well as how they offered alternative and indirect explanations for why ethnic minorities were stopped more often.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/21533687221127445

Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos, Cornel Nesseler & Helmut M. Dietl, Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Gomez-Gonzalez, Carlos, Cornel Nesseler & Helmut M. Dietl (2021). Mapping discrimination in Europe through a field experiment in amateur sport. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00773-2

Societies are increasingly multicultural and diverse, consisting of members who migrated from various other countries. However, immigrants and ethnic minorities often face discrimination in the form of fewer opportunities for labor and housing, as well as limitations on interactions in other social domains. Using mock email accounts with typical native-sounding and foreign-sounding names, we contacted 23,020 amateur football clubs in 22 European countries, asking to participate in a training session. Response rates differed across countries and were, on average, about 10% lower for foreign-sounding names. The present field experiment reveals discrimination against ethnic minority groups, uncovering organizational deficiencies in a system trusted to foster social interactions.

PDF: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00773-2

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

Lindekilde, Lasse. ‘The Mainstreaming of Far-Right Discourse in Denmark’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies’ (2014)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lindekilde, Lasse. ‘The Mainstreaming of Far-Right Discourse in Denmark’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, Routledge, Oct. 2014, pp. 363–382.

Building on two recent case studies of public debates concerning political meetings arranged by or involving controversial Muslim actors in Denmark, this article argues that an observed mainstreaming of intolerant discourses, most forcefully expressed by the Danish People’s Party, can be explained by the proliferation of a new form of “liberal intolerance” that has transformed old racist or nationalist intolerance into a discourse stressing liberal reasons (autonomy, gender equality, social cohesion, public-private divide, security risks) for not tolerating particular Muslim practices. By comparing the two cases, the different toleration/intoleration positions and arguments in the two debates are brought out, and four different modalities of “liberal intolerance” are identified. Further, the article shows how the spread of liberal intolerance discourses across the political spectrum in Denmark has significantly affected Danish (liberal) Muslim actors’ possibilities of political participation and room for maneuvering.

doi:10.1080/15562948.2014.894171.

Matthiesen, Noomi Christine Linde. ‘Working Together in a Deficit Logic: Home–School Partnerships with Somali Diaspora Parents’. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Matthiesen, Noomi Christine Linde. ‘Working Together in a Deficit Logic: Home–School Partnerships with Somali Diaspora Parents’. Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 20, no. 4, July 2017, pp. 495–507.

Drawing on discursive psychology this article examines the understandings teachers and principals in Danish Public Schools have regarding Somali diaspora parenting practices. Furthermore, the article investigates what these understandings mean in interaction with children in the classrooms and with parents in home–school communication. It is argued that in a society with increased focus on parental responsibility the teachers and principals draw on a deficit logic when dealing with Somali diaspora parents and children which consequently leads to teachers either transmitting their expertise by educating parents or compensating for perceived deficiencies in parental practices. Both these strategies result in significant marginalizing consequences where ‘difference’ is understood as ‘wrong’ or ‘inadequate’.

doi:10.1080/13613324.2015.1134469.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2015.1134469.

Padovan-Özdemir, Marta. ‘Flygtningeankomster Og Racialiserede Velfærdsdynamikker i Danmark, 1978-2016’. (2018)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Padovan-Özdemir, Marta. ‘Flygtningeankomster Og Racialiserede Velfærdsdynamikker i Danmark, 1978-2016’. Social Kritik:Tidsskrift for Social Analyse and Debat, vol. 30, no. 156, 2018, pp. 20–33.

enne artikel undersøger, hvordan flygtninge på tværs af velfærdsarbejde udtænkt af civilsamfundsorganisationer og kommuner i Danmark bliver re-præsenteret i relation til den måde samfundet forventes at udvikle sig på. Det historiske materiale består af dokumenter fra Dansk Flygtningehjælp, Dansk Røde Kors og Kommunernes Landsforening i perioderne 2014-2016, 1992-1996 og 1978-1980, hvor hhv. syriske, bosniske og vietnamesiske flygtninge ankom til Danmark. På baggrund af en postkolonial velfærdsanalytik med fokus på materialets klassifikationer og re-præsentationernes ydre, identificerer artiklen to dominerende billeder af flygtningen: den produktive og den syge. Det konkluderes, at velfærdsdynamikken, der iværksættes i relation til flygtninge, er styret af en forskelssættende økonomisk og patologisk bekymring for samfundets såvel som individets degenerering. Denne udvikling tolkes forsøgsvis som udtryk for racialiserede velfærdsdynamikker i den moderne stats historie, hvor velfærdsstatens universalisme bærer på reminiscenser af kolonialismens konstruktion af den primitive og uciviliserede anden, der på imperialistisk og godgørende vis må civiliseres.

https://www.ucviden.dk/da/publications/flygtningeankomster-og-racialiserede-velf%C3%A6rdsdynamikker-i-danmark

Padovan-Özdemir, Marta. The Making of Educationally Manageable Immigrant Schoolchildren in Denmark,1970–2013A Critical Prism for Studying the Fabrication of a Danish Welfare Nation State. (2016) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Padovan-Özdemir, Marta. The Making of Educationally Manageable Immigrant Schoolchildren in Denmark,1970–2013A Critical Prism for Studying the Fabrication of a Danish Welfare Nation State. Dissertation. University of Copenhagen, 2016,

Ever since children of non-Western labour immigrants appeared in Danish public schools in the early 1970s, immigrant schoolchildren have attracted considerable educational attention from politicians, administrators, teachers, experts, and researchers.  This  attention  has  often  been  voiced  as  a  concern  for  these children’s  individual  welfare,  but  also  for  the collective welfare of Danish society.  With the objective of unravelling this educational attention, the thesis asks how were immigrant schoolchildren made  educationally  manageable  in  Danish  public  schools  between  1970  and  2013.  To  offer  a  critical  exploration  of these high-stakes educational  practices addressing immigrant schoolchildren and their families, the thesis also inquires how these practices of educationalised governing have fed into fabricating a post-1970 Danish welfare nation state. The thesis explores these research questions from a critical, historical perspective on three distinct educational practices  used  to  capture  the  manifold  investments  present  in  making  immigrant  schoolchildren  educationally manageable.  First,  it  describes  administrative  knowledge  practices  in  which  administrators,  experts,  and  professionals have been involved in identifying the problem of and suggesting solutions for organising  the welfare and the schooling of  immigrant  schoolchildren.  Second,  it  studies  teacher  professionalisation  practices  whereby  teachers,  experts,  and researchers  have  been  involved  in  identifying  educational  problematisations  of  immigrant  schoolchildren’s presence, based on which professional capacities, dispositions, and identities have been developed over time. Third, it examines didactical  practices  in  which  teachers,  experts,  researchers,  textbook  writers,  journalists,  publishing  houses, nongovernmental  organisations,  and  so  forth  have  been  involved  in  developing  pedagogical  repertoires  of  truths, techniques, and objectives for teachers to manage immigrant schoolchildren’s presence. These  three  educational  practices  have  been  investigated  through  their  textual  effects  in  the  shape  of commission  reports,  project  evaluations,  administrative  procedures,  professional  journal  articles,  teacher  handbooks, teacher  guidelines,  and  so  forth.  Three  corpora  of  historical  material  have  been  established  based  on  the  personal research  archive  of  the  late  education  researcher  Jørgen  Gimbel.  This  trove  is  supplemented  with  the  personal,  work-related  archives  of  other  professionals  who  have  been  active  in  the  investigational  field,  annual  reports  of  the  Danish Royal  School  of  Education  (1970–2000),  three  professional  journals  that  were  specialised  in  the  field  of  immigrant schoolchildren’s education (1980–2013),  and  a  comprehensive  public  library  search.  The  three  corpora  comprise  872 texts  exhibiting  the  qualities  of  regulating,  reflecting,  and  guiding  educational  practices  addressing  immigrant schoolchildren’s presence in Danish public schools between 1970 and 2013.The  thesis constructs educational  practices vis-à-vis immigrant schoolchildren as a  critical prism for studying the  emergence  of  a  Danish  welfare  nation  state.  Qua  an  analytics  of  governing,  the  emergence  of  a  Danish  welfare nation  state  is  constructed  and  studied  as  the  effect  of  a  variegated  domain  of  practices  engaged  in  the  governing  of individual  and  collective  welfare  as  responses  to  the  social  question  of  integration.  Thus,  this  thesis  cultivates  a profound  questioning  of  problem-solving  complexes  arising  in  response  to  immigrant  schoolchildren’s presence,  as these  problem-solving  complexes  have  been  involved  in  educationalising  the  social  question  of  integration,  and imagining a better society. As  such,  this  thesis  offers  problematisations  of  immigrant  schoolchildren’s  education,  showing  how educationalised  welfare  work  addressing  non-Western  immigrant  children  and  their  families  functioned  not  only  as  a deeply  rooted  national(ist)  project,  but  also  equally  as  a  racialising,  civilising,  modernising  project  of  governing  the social and doing good. Accordingly, the thesis demonstrates how revisiting the social question in a post-1970 context of educating  immigrant  schoolchildren  disturbs  the  optimistic  salvation  project  of  publicly  educating  and  integrating immigrants.  The  thesis  shows  how  a  post-1970  Danish  welfare  nation  state  can  be  understood  as  the  effect  of  an inherently  modernistic  project  of  brutal  care,  subtly  racialised  professionalisation,  and  a  civilising  pedagogy  placing immigrant schoolchildren on the threshold of a thesis of modern Danish life. The thesis has been prepared as a collection of two scientific journal articles and one lengthy contribution to an anthology, in which the thesis’s analytical findings are presented. In addition, it presents a chapter on the development of  a  positive  form  of  critique,  a  thematised  historiography  of  the  cross-disciplinary  research  context  informing  this thesis,  a  brief  reflection  upon  concepts  lost  and  found  in  translation,  an  extended  discussion  on  the  writing  of  history and  the methodological implications of an analytics of governing, and a final chapter discussing the thesis’s overall contribution to its research context.

PDF: https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/169757836/Ph.d._afhandling_2016_Padovan_zdemir.pdf.

Soei, Aydin. Omar – og de andre: vrede unge mænd og modborgerskab. (2018)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Soei, Aydin. Omar – og de andre: vrede unge mænd og modborgerskab. Gads Forlag, 2018.

”Mange har en følelse af at være andenrangsborgere. Og dét at folk inderst inde godt ved, at de ikke er accepterede i Danmark, gør jo ondt.”  Sådan lyder det fra en af de ’vrede unge mænd’, som sociologen Aydin Soei har talt med til bogen Omar – og de andre. Bogen handler om kriminalitetstruede unge mænd med minoritetsbaggrund og deres oplevelse af modborgerskab, som kan få dem til at vende det danske samfund ryggen. Flertallet af de unge fra landets udsatte områder lever helt almindelige liv med skole, job og familie, men nogle ender som radikaliserede, som bandemedlemmer eller storkriminelle. Én enkelt, Omar el-Hussein, opgav helt at være en del af samfundet, da han i 2015 dræbte to uskyldige mænd i terrorangrebet ved Krudttønden og den jødiske synagoge i København. Omar el-Husseins baggrund minder om så mange andre kriminalitetstruede minoritetsdrenges, viser bogens gennemgang, men udgangen på hans historie blev, at han valgte at agere som en ekstrem modborger. 

I 2018 er det ti år siden, at Danmark blev ramt af landsdækkende optøjer i udsatte boligområder, og at den danske bandekonflikt brød ud og udviklede sig til en permanent størrelse. Begge fænomener er skelsættende i dansk ‘ghettohistorie’ og beskrives i Omar – og de andre, der sammenligner udfordringerne med radikalisering, bander og optøjer i den danske, amerikanske og franske ‘ghetto’.  Bogen er en fortsættelse af Vrede unge mænd (2011), hvorfra enkelte af kapitlerne går igen i nye og opdaterede versioner. Nogle af de unge, som forfatteren mødte første gang for et årti siden, geninterviewes side om side med nye stemmer, der bidrager til at tegne et portræt af udviklingen blandt en særlig gruppe unge i landets udsatte områder.

https://gad.dk/omar-og-de-andre

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘Working towards Diversity with a Postmigrant Perspective: How to Examine Representation of Ethnic Minorities in Cultural Institutions’. (2017)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Vitting-Seerup, Sabrina. ‘Working towards Diversity with a Postmigrant Perspective: How to Examine Representation of Ethnic Minorities in Cultural Institutions’. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Routledge, Aug. 2017, pp. 45–55.

This article presents ways for researchers and cultural workers to find and examine versions of representation in cultural institutions through a postmigrant perspective. The starting point is Denmark—a European nation state with, like many others, a diverse composition of citizens. This diversity is, however, poorly represented in Danish cultural institutions and the problem is difficult for many cultural workers to discuss due to the hesitation large segments of the Danish population feel about using terms associated with race and religion. Since much of the research regarding representation is strictly critical in its approach, it is also challenging to find the proper tools and language to discuss and correct the current skewed situation. This article is intended to provide balance in representation, first by presenting a model of four levels for potential positioning of diverse representation in cultural institutions and, secondly, by addressing the problems of access and depiction in regards to representation.

doi:10.1080/20004214.2017.1371563.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20004214.2017.1371563?needAccess=true

Galal, Lise Paulsen, and Louise Lund Liebmann. Magt og (m)ulighed Forhandlinger af konformitet, autoritet og mobilitet blandt etniske minoritetsborgere i Danmark. (2020) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Galal, Lise Paulsen, and Louise Lund Liebmann. Magt og (m)ulighed Forhandlinger af konformitet, autoritet og mobilitet blandt etniske minoritetsborgere i Danmark. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitet, 2020.

Forskningsprojektets fokus: Forskningsprojektet Magt og (m)ulighed har fokus på etniske minoritetsborgere og deres erfaring med og udlægning af begrænsninger i hverdagslivet. Særligt undersøges, hvordan begrænsninger hænger sammen med andres (og egne) forventninger til og forsøg på at tilvejebringe og kontrollere en særlig, normativ adfærd i minoritetsetniske miljøer. Hvor afsættet for projektet er at undersøge adfærd, der i Styrelsen for International Rekruttering og Integrations terminologi kaldes ’æresrelaterede konflikter og negativ social kontrol’, har forskningsprojektet valgt en undersøgende tilgang og et intersektionelt perspektiv med henblik på en bred og nuanceret forståelse af, hvad vi har valgt at kalde ’konformitetspres’. Ud over et hverdagsperspektiv er forsknings-projektets særlige fokusområder:

• Et ikke-institutionaliseret hverdagsperspektiv. I stedet for at fokusere på etniske minoritetsborgere, der i kraft af oplevelser med konflikt, kontrol og/eller vold har været i kontakt med myndigheder og hjælpe-indsatser, har vi talt med borgere, som ikke har modtaget en sådan assistance. På den måde inddrager vi ’almindelige’ hverdagserfaringer med og perspektiver på konformitetspres frem for at undersøge højspændte volds- og konfliktsituationer.

• Strategier og ressourcer. Frem for at have fokus på at måle omfang af et givent konformitetspres, undersøger vi, hvordan etniske minoritetsborgere forhandler, og hvilke strategier de trækker på, for at imødegå eller håndtere pres for at blive mere konforme.

•Tilskrivning af betydning til ære som begreb. Hvor æresrelaterede konflikter i myndighedssprog henviser til en specifik forståelse af ære knyttet (primært) til kvindens ærbarhed som betegnende for hele familiens ære, undersøger vi så åbent som muligt, hvordan etniske minoritetsborgere forstår og anvender ære som begreb, og hvordan de tillægger det betydning og relevans i deres eget, dagligt levede liv. Sammenfatning 8• Religions betydning for erfaringer med konformitetspres. Medborgerskabsundersøgelsen peger på, at unge med en religiøst praktiserende baggrund (og bosat i multikulturelle boligområder) i større grad rapporterer oplevelser med negativ social kontrol. Derfor undersøger vi, hvordan etniske minoritets-borgere anvender religion i forhandlinger af selvbestemmelse og lighed. Da flertallet af vores informanter har muslimsk tilhørsforhold, undersøger vi i praksis, hvordan de forhandler værdier og praksisser med islam. 

• Bosætningens betydning for erfaringer med konformitetspres. Medborgerskabsundersøgelsen viser også, at minoritetsetniske borgere – og særligt kvinder – oftere møder negativ social kontrol, hvis de er bosat i multikulturelle boligområder. Derfor undersøger vi, hvordan etniske minoritetsborgere anvender sted og mobilitet som ressource i forhandlinger af selvbestemmelse og lighed.

PDF: https://forskning.ruc.dk/files/67849011/RUC_MagtOg_M_ulighed_rapport_web.pdf.

Fuglsang Larsen, Jeppe, Birte Siim, and Susi Meret. ‘Militants from the Other Side. Anti-Bodies to Hate-Speech and Behavior in Denmark.’ (2014) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Fuglsang Larsen, Jeppe, Birte Siim, and Susi Meret. State of the Art. Work Stream 3 – the Danish Report: Militants from the Other Side. Anti-Bodies to Hate-Speech and Behavior in Denmark. 461002, Aalborg University, 2014, p. 38.

The purpose of the State Of the Art (SOA) is to gain knowledge about the Danish Context of organisations, groups and movements in civil society countering hate speech, institutional racism and exclusionary practices and to identify gaps in national research on the issue that can be explored through field work, interviews and group discussions/dialogues, possibly to be debated at roundtable convening in the autumn of 2014.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/209278105/RAGE_SOA_WS_3_Final.pdf.

Flyvholm, Anne-Mai. ‘Integration, Enlightenment or Rights?: Three Perspectives on Hate Crimes against Muslims in Denmark’. (2020)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Flyvholm, Anne-Mai. ‘Integration, Enlightenment or Rights?: Three Perspectives on Hate Crimes against Muslims in Denmark’. Journal of Muslims in Europe, vol. 9, no. 3, Brill, Sept. 2020, pp. 304–330.

This article examines how Danish Muslim organisations ascribe meaning to hate crimes against Muslims in Denmark. The study is a maximum variation case study of three Muslim organisations. Drawing on intersectional theory, organisations were included that vary on identity markers. While there are great similarities in how the organisations define hate crime, the article argues that they articulate the concept as part of very different socio-political contexts. This suggests that while the organisations in general agree on what hate crime –is–, the organisations’ intersectional identities affect which socio-political contexts they articulate as relevant in relation to hate crime.

doi:10.1163/22117954-BJA10015.

https://brill.com/view/journals/jome/9/3/article-p304_3.xml

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov. ‘Trust in a Time of Increasing Diversity: On the Relationship between Ethnic Heterogeneity and Social Trust in Denmark from 1979 until Today: Trust in a Time of Increasing Diversity’. (2012)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov. ‘Trust in a Time of Increasing Diversity: On the Relationship between Ethnic Heterogeneity and Social Trust in Denmark from 1979 until Today: Trust in a Time of Increasing Diversity’. Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 35, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 273–294.

This article examines the impact of ethnic diversity in Danish municipalities on citizens’ social trust over the last three decades. During this period, Danish society has grown increas- ingly ethnically diverse, and this begs the question whether this has influenced trust in others negatively. Existing evidence from the Anglo-Saxon countries would suggest that this is the case, whereas evidence from the European continent mainly suggests that no link exists between ethnic diversity and social trust. The empirical analysis uses individual-level data on social trust from several surveys in Denmark in the period from 1979 to 2009 coupled with diversity at the municipality level. Individual-level measures of trust over time enable estimation of the impact of changes in ethnic diversity within municipalities on social trust and, it is argued, thereby a more precise estimate of the effect of ethnic diversity on trust. The results suggest that social trust is negatively affected by ethnic diversity. The article concludes by discussing this result and suggest avenues for further research.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9477.2012.00289.x.

http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2012.00289.x.

Dinesen, Peter Thisted. ‘Upbringing, Early Experiences of Discrimination and Social Identity: Explaining Generalised Trust among Immigrants in Denmark’. (2010)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Dinesen, Peter Thisted. ‘Upbringing, Early Experiences of Discrimination and Social Identity: Explaining Generalised Trust among Immigrants in Denmark’. Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, 2010, pp. 93–111.

The aim of this article is to analyse the causes of generalised trust among immigrants. Three different explanations of generalised trust are examined, focusing on the role of a restrictive upbringing, early experiences of discrimination and social identity. The data consist of a panel of immigrants from Turkey, Pakistan and former Yugoslavia living in Denmark and surveyed in 1988 and 1999. The results from a multivariate analysis, including a host of background variables, show that only a restrictive upbringing affects generalised trust significantly as having experienced this type of upbringing leads to lower trust. Early experiences of discrimination and social identity in terms of national identification do not affect generalised trust. The article concludes by discussing the finding that parental socialisation in terms of a restrictive upbringing affects generalised trust.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2009.00240.x.

PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2009.00240.x.

Dahl, Malte. Detecting Discrimination: How Group-Based Biases Shape Economic and Political Interactions : Five Empirical Contributions. (2019) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Dahl, Malte. Detecting Discrimination: How Group-Based Biases Shape Economic and Political Interactions : Five Empirical Contributions. Cph: Dissertation. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 2019.

In this dissertation, I explore how group-based biases shape economic and political interactions between salient social groups. Specifically, I test if, when and how some individuals are treated differently because of their descriptive characteristics such as ethnicity or gender. I employ a series of experiments to uncover these questions. I apply a theoretical framework asserting that discrimination can be due to both personal preferences and strategic behaviour and draw upon insights from political behaviour and social psychology to better understand the theoretical underpinnings of discrimination. Specifically, I incorporate insights from a social cognition perspective, which offers a way to understand the cognitive processes by which people place others into social groups and how this shapes behaviour. From these perspectives, I lay out some propositions that I test in two empirical tracks across five research articles that all build on field or survey experiments. In the first track, I explore how social group categories shape citizens’ encounters with public managers and private employers during the hiring process in the Danish labour market. In two correspondence experiments in which equivalent job applications and cover letters with randomly assigned aliases were sent in response to job openings, I uncover differential treatment in hiring decisions. The experiments leave no doubt that immigrant-origin minorities are targets of significant discrimination. This differential treatment is startling considering the fact that applicants were highly qualified for the jobs they applied for. Going beyond existing work, I show that this is especially true when minorities are male or when female applicants wear a headscarf which suggests the importance of the intersection of ethnicity, gender and cues of cultural distinctiveness. Moreover, I find little evidence to indicate that immigrant-origin minorities can reduce this discrimination by indicating adherence to cultural norms. In the second track, I study the effect of group-based biases on the political representation of underrepresented groups. The research articles present compelling evidence that immigrant-origin minorities face significant barriers in obtaining substantive and descriptive political representation. In a field experiment, the third research article indicates the significant bias of incumbents in their direct communication with ethnic out-group constituents. This manifests itself directly in the legislator-constituent relationship: when constituents contact their local incumbents to retrieve information on the location of their polling station, minority voters are significantly less likely to receive a reply, and they receive replies of lower quality. Although the overall level of responsive- ness increases when politicians face strong electoral incentives, the bias persists. One important contribution is the discovery that immigrant-origin voters can identify more responsive politicians by paying attention to two types of heuristics regarding legislators: their partisan affiliation cues and their stated preferences on immigration policies. Departing from the finding that descriptive representation impacts substantive representation, the fourth research article explores reasons for the gap in political representation. Specifically, it investigates whether local political candidates with immigrant-origin names face barriers due to negative voter preferences. Building on a conjoint experiment, the article presents evidence indicat- ing that the electoral prospects of political candidates with immigrant-origin names are hampered because voters prefer ethnic in-group candidates. Strikingly, this is true in a high-information set- ting where voters are informed about candidates’ political experience, policy positions and party membership. Moreover, there is no evidence for a pro-male bias. Finally, in the last research article, I study the validity of the candidate conjoint experimental design. Specifically, I examine to what extent social desirability bias threatens validity and which tactics researchers can pursue to obtain reliable answers. The results indicate that social desirability bias may be a more minimal concern than what is often assumed. Taken together, the evidence from the five research articles provides insight into a deeply challenging social issue. There are often strong legal or normative arguments emphasizing why, in many socio-political interactions, individuals’ immutable group categories should be invisible. Inadequate representation and opportunities can have serious consequences and downstream electoral effects on a number of societal outcomes and have negative spill-over effects across social domains and time. The research articles indicate that discrimination appears to be hard to mitigate and immigrant- origin minorities have few tools at their disposal to reduce discrimination, which points to the need for institutional actions to eliminate barriers that inhibit individuals from attaining equal access.

PDF: https://menneskeret.dk/sites/menneskeret.dk/files/media/dokumenter/malte_dahl_forskning.pdf

Agergaard, Sine, et al. ‘Politicisation of Migrant Leisure: A Public and Civil Intervention Involving Organised Sports’. (2016) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Agergaard, Sine, et al. ‘Politicisation of Migrant Leisure: A Public and Civil Intervention Involving Organised Sports’. Leisure Studies, vol. 35, no. 2, Mar. 2016, pp. 200–214. Taylor and Francis+NEJM,

Using the perspective of governmentality this article aims to contribute to an understanding of the rationalities of specific political interventions, and the techniques used to monitor the leisure activities of particular target groups. This process of politicization is revealed here through a case study of an intervention that provides sporting activities in holiday periods for migrant children and adolescents living in so-called socially disadvantaged areas (DGI Playground). The analysis highlights the rationality that the leisure time of migrant youth is a potentially dangerous time slot and they must be engaged in organized sports; that is not only healthy but also civilizing and character forming leisure time activities. Techniques of monitoring the intervention are developed in a partnership between public institutions, regional umbrella organizations and local sports clubs leading to a need for employment of welfare professionals. Furthermore, the article illustrates that in the discursive construction of subject positions for the target group, migrant youth tend to become clients and recipients of public services rather than potential members of civil sports clubs. These findings are supported by ethnographic interviews with participants that show how youngsters who took part in DGI Playground were able to reflect the official aim of the programme and relate this to their desire to have fun and hang out with their friends. The article ends with a discussion of the further scope of applying critical theoretical perspectives to studies of migrants’ leisure and sports activities.

PDF: https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/files/112129858/Politicisation_of_migrant_leisure.pdf.

doi:10.1080/02614367.2015.1009848.