Tag: education

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

~ mortenstinus

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

Guschke, Bontu Lucie, Khawaja, Iram, & Myong, Lene. Research and education on racism in Denmark: The state of the field – and where to from here. (2023). [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Guschke, Bontu Lucie, Khawaja, Iram, & Myong, Lene. Research and education on racism in Denmark: The state of the field – and where to from here. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35(2), 2023, 21–28.

This piece is based on a roundtable discussion that took place as part of the Danish Gender Studies Conference on 19 August 2022 at the University of Copenhagen. The roundtable was planned by the three special issue editors to publish it as part of this special issue. Iram Khawaja, associate professor at theɸDanish School of Education (DPU) at Aarhus University, and Lene Myong, professor at the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Stavanger, chaired the discussion, while Bontu Lucie Guschke joined as a discussant.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/141915

Gilliam, Laura. Being Muslim “without a fuss”: Relaxed religiosity and conditional inclusion in Danish schools and society. (2022). [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Gilliam, Laura. Being Muslim “without a fuss”: Relaxed religiosity and conditional inclusion in Danish schools and society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45(6), 2022, 1096–1114.

The ethnic boundary between majority Danes and Muslim minorities has become increasingly impermeable in recent decades, restricting Muslim minorities to conditional inclusion, adapting to the majority’s conditions of good citizenship. This article looks at the “conditions of inclusion” for Muslim pupils in multi-ethnic schools, focusing on what pupils express as an ideal of being a “relaxed Muslim”. This condition of “relaxed” religiosity reflects the dominant discourse on integration in Denmark with its anxiety about Islamism and demands that Muslims adjust to the moderate secularism that typifies Danish society. Yet it is argued that it also points to a more general condition of being a good minority citizen in the Danish welfare society and its institutions, as well as in other similar societies, linked to ensuring the smooth running of everyday practices, ideas about civilized interaction, and maintaining the cultural dominance of the majority, and thus to a majoritydefined harmony.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1971733

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354323399_Being_Muslim_without_a_fuss_relaxed_religiosity_and_conditional_inclusion_in_Danish_schools_and_society

Chaiklin, Seth. Can There Be Multicultural Science Education Policy in a Country That Does Not Recognize Multicultural Science Education?: The Case of Denmark and the Folkeskole. (2021)

~ mortenstinus

Chaiklin, Seth. Can There Be Multicultural Science Education Policy in a Country That Does Not Recognize Multicultural Science Education?: The Case of Denmark and the Folkeskole. In M. M. Atwater (Ed.), International Handbook of Research on Multicultural Science Education, 2021 (pp. 1–45). Springer International Publishing.

In Denmark, the concept of multicultural science education is absent from educational research, policy, and practice. Nonetheless, this chapter uses this concept as an analytic lens to describe science education policy and practice for primary and lower-secondary school in Denmark. The introduction discusses why it can be meaningful to analyze a country’s science education policy from a multicultural science education perspective, even when the concept is not part of the existing societal discourse. The main body of the chapter is organized into four major sections. The first section introduces the idea of multicultural science education as used in this chapter, followed by sections that give a general introduction to the sociohistorical context of Denmark and a general overview of the organization, governance, and curricular content of the educational system in Denmark. The fourth section gives a narrative account that discusses and interprets how Danish school policy can be understood from a multicultural science education perspective. The conclusion discusses what this case study provides in terms of understanding multicultural science education in Denmark. The main conclusions are (a) there is a confluence between the ideals of Danish school law and policy and many of the ideals expressed within multicultural science education perspectives; (b) some aspects of Danish practice (e.g., dannelse, democratic citizenship) may provide interesting ideas for advancing the study of multicultural science education more generally; and (c) there are possibilities and challenges (e.g., a strong monocultural focus in educational policy) for working further with a multicultural science education perspective in Denmark.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37743-4_50-1

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

~ mortenstinus

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

Bischoff, Carina Saxlund, Anders Ejrnæs & Olivier Rubin. A quasi-experimental study of ethnic and gender bias in university grading. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Bischoff, Carina Saxlund, Anders Ejrnæs & Olivier Rubin. A quasi-experimental study of ethnic and gender bias in university grading. PLOS ONE, 16(7), 2021, e0254422.

This paper contributes to the debate on race- and gender-based discrimination in grading. We apply a quasi-experimental research design exploiting a shift from open grading in 2018 (examinee’s name clearly visible on written assignments), to blind grading in 2019 (only student ID number visible). The analysis thus informs name-based stereotyping and discrimination, where student ethnicity and gender are derived from their names on written assignments. The case is a quantitative methods exam at Roskilde University (Denmark). We rely on OLS regression models with interaction terms to analyze whether blind grading has any impact on the relative grading differences between the sexes (female vs. male examinees) and/or between the two core ethnic groups (ethnic minorities vs. ethnic majority examinees). The results show no evidence of gender or ethnic bias based on names in the grading process. The results were validated by several checks for robustness. We argue that the weaker evidence of ethnic discrimination in grading vis-à-vis discrimination in employment and housing suggests the relevance of gauging the stakes involved in potentially discriminatory activities.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254422

PDF: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0254422

Engebretsen, Elisabeth L. & Mia Liinason. Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe: Critical Essays on Knowledge, Inequality and Belonging. (2023). [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Engebretsen, Elisabeth L. & Mia Liinason. Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe: Critical Essays on Knowledge, Inequality and Belonging (1st ed.). 2023. Routledge.

Interdisciplinary in perspective, this book explores contemporary struggles around ‘identity politics’ in Europe, offering a unique glimpse into contemporary tensions and paradoxes surrounding identities, belonging, exclusions and their deep-seated gendered, colonial and racist legacies. With a particular focus on the Nordic region, it provides insights into the ways in which people who find themselves in minoritized positions struggle against multiple injustices. Through a series of case studies documenting counter-struggles against racist, colonialist, sexist forms of discrimination and exclusion, Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe asks how the paradigm and politics of the welfare state operate to discriminate against the most marginalized, by instating a naturalized hierarchy of human-ness. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race, gender, colonialism and postcolonialism, citizenship and belonging. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction Transforming identities in contemporary Europe By Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, Mia Liinason 

“Welcome to the most privileged, most xenophobic country in the world”. Affective figurations of white Danishness in the making of a Danish citizen By Linda Lapiņa 

Educational challenges for Nordic exceptionalism Epistemic injustice in the absence of antiracist education By Kris Clarke, Manté Vertelyté 

Autobiographical flesh Understanding Western notions of humanity through the life and selected writings of Una Marson (1905–1965) By Jéssica Nogueira Varela 

‘It’s our bodies, we are the experts!’ Countering pathologisation, gate-keeping and Danish exceptionalism through collective trans knowledges, coalition-building and insistence By Nico Miskow Friborg 

Gayness between nation builders and money makers From ideology to new essentialism By Anna-Maria Sörberg 

(Not) in the name of gender equality Migrant women, empowerment, employment, and minority women’s organizations By Christel Stormhøj 

‘Home is where the cat is’ The here-there of queer (un)belonging By Ramona Dima, Simona Dumitriu 

The poetics of climate change and politics of pain Sámi social media activist critique of the Swedish state By Akvilė Buitvydaitė, Elisabeth L. Engebretsen 

Varieties of exceptionalism A conversation By Selin Çağatay, Mia Liinason, Olga Sasunkevich

PDF: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003245155

Jacobsen, Gro Hellesdatter, and Anke Piekut, ‘Integrating’ Immigrant Children? School Professionals’ Reflections on the Boundaries between Educational Ideals and Society’s Problematization of Immigrants. (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Jacobsen, Gro Hellesdatter, and Anke Piekut, ‘Integrating’ Immigrant Children? School Professionals’ Reflections on the Boundaries between Educational Ideals and Society’s Problematization of Immigrants, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 22.2 (2022), 132–47

In Danish policy and public debates, the concept of integration is often related to a problematization of immigrants, which paradoxically makes their successful integration into Danish society unobtainable. In recent years, Denmark has become known for its increasingly restrictive policies regarding immigration and integration, although an internal ‘exceptionalist’ understanding of the country as a place without discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity still prevails. Drawing on interviews with principals and teachers from 15 Danish schools, the paper analyses these professionals’ reflections on their work of educating immigrant children in a societal context of restrictive immigration and integration policies, focusing specifically on how they construct, cross, and work at the boundaries between school and society. The article contributes to our understanding of professionals’ processes of navigating and demarcating themselves from a highly politicized context of immigration and integration policies, while at the same time illuminating more general societal processes regarding race, integration, and nationalism.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12369

Jensen, Sarah, ‘The Danes Are Rich and Live in the Villas; the Others Live in the Blocks of Flats’: On the Social and Material Character of Diversity in Children’s School Life in Denmark. (2021)

~ mortenstinus

Jensen, Sarah, ‘The Danes Are Rich and Live in the Villas; the Others Live in the Blocks of Flats’: On the Social and Material Character of Diversity in Children’s School Life in Denmark, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 0.0 (2021), 1–16

In post-structurally informed research, the answer to the widely documented ‘achievement gap’ among ethnic minorities has been a critique of educational institutions’ monocultural discourse and its exclusionary effects, thus highlighting a contingent, discursive conception of diversity. However, in this empirical article, 10- to 15-year-old students from two ethnically mixed schools in Denmark point to a much more concrete, social and material diversity that is laid out in terms of patterns of residence, leisure activities, and socio-economic resources at home. Over the school years, however, this social and material diversity is gradually transformed to a question of ethnicity that explains why students’ opportunities for educational participation ultimately differ. From a dialectical materialist reading of Hall’s concept of articulation, this article explores how this transformation is made possible in everyday school life, thus arguing that ethnic diversity is more than a contingent, discursive construction; it is closely connected to ingrained patterns of material inequity in educational practice.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1900620

Li, Jin Hui, The Lived Class and Racialization – Histories of ‘Foreign Workers’ Children’s’ School Experiences in Denmark. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Li, Jin Hui, The Lived Class and Racialization – Histories of ‘Foreign Workers’ Children’s’ School Experiences in Denmark, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7.3 (2021), 190–99

In recent years, the Danish education context has seen an increased concern about underperforming students with migratory histories (particularly students perceived as non-Western descendants) in the political and pedagogical discourses. There seem to be some historical tensions between the societal expectation of class mobility through education on one hand and the neglect of issues of class in the curriculum of schooling for migrant students on the other. These groups of students were labelled ‘foreign workers’ children’ in the 1970s’ education policy, with stress on ‘the foreign’ rather than ‘the worker’ part. Based on oral history interviews with former migrant students, this article explores how the class process for migrant students operated through racialized practices in Danish schooling in the 1980s. Contributing to the literature on migrant education and class experiences, the study finds that the migrant students’ lived class experiences are woven into the processes of racialization in such a way that even the migrant students from academic homes had racialized struggles sustaining their middle-classed positionality in the Danish school. The arrangement of the power structures of class is hence strongly interwoven with the power structure of race in the historical context of Danish schooling.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1985413

Li, Jin Hui, and Mette Buchardt, ‘Feeling Strange’ ‒ Oral Histories of Newly Arrived Migrant Children’s Experiences of Schooling in Denmark from the 1970s. (2022)

~ mortenstinus

Li, Jin Hui, and Mette Buchardt, ‘Feeling Strange’ ‒ Oral Histories of Newly Arrived Migrant Children’s Experiences of Schooling in Denmark from the 1970s, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 2022

Based on oral history interviews with adults with a migration history who in their childhood entered into the Danish education system as “newcomers”, the article points out that the practised identity politics of schooling in the 1970s in Denmark for migrant students was operated through affective practices of “feeling strange”. The article explores how the fact that emotions of “feeling strange” have shaped newly arrived migrants’ schooling experience in Denmark since the 1970s connects to processes of racialisation. Rather than being connected only to “feeling new” and “unexpected”, the strangeness appears as connected to the broader affective hierarchies of racialisation in a way that makes it possible for new migrant students to feel strange in a “familiar institution” such as school. The study also displays that racialised emotions of feeling strange for migrants can easily re-emerge, influencing their educational and professional paths when remembered as adults. The effects of affective racialised practice learned in the school institution thus has severe consequences for the students because their access to school is shaped through minoritised positions, something that stays with them after leaving school.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2022.2065641

Li, Jin Hui, and Ahrong Yang, Forhandlinger af tilhørsforhold på tværs af tid: Racialt minoriserede kvinders erindringer og erfaringer med at høre til i den danske folkeskole. (2023) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Li, Jin Hui, and Ahrong Yang, Forhandlinger af tilhørsforhold på tværs af tid: Racialt minoriserede kvinders erindringer og erfaringer med at høre til i den danske folkeskole, Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 35.2 (2023), 80–95

Inspired by spatial education research and queer and critical race theories, this article investigates how experiences of being a racially minoritized girl/woman in a Danish primary school context have shaped over time and influenced their belonging at school and in society. The analytical insights in this article derive from empirical material that spans a longer period of time and are based on, respectively, empirical material in which racially minoritized women share their experiences of attending Danish primary school in the period 1970 to the 1990s and empirical material in which female students share their experiences of attending Danish primary school today. While the students’ experiences are negotiated on different racialized terms, the temporal perspective helps to identify patterns of how racial exclusion cuts across time and how access to being seen as (fully) Danish is a struggle for racially minoritized female students. Overall, the analysis finds that belonging in the Danish primary school and in Danish society is a constant struggle for racially minoritized female students. Demanding continuous negotiation, explanations, and imagined alternatives, belonging is neither neutral nor taken for granted by the racially minoritized female students neither in the 1970s nor today.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/135625

Schmidt, Cecilie Ullerup, No Count! BIPoC Artists Counteracting ‘Fair’ Representation and Systemic Racial Loneliness in Higher Education in the Arts. (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Schmidt, Cecilie Ullerup, No Count! BIPoC Artists Counteracting ‘Fair’ Representation and Systemic Racial Loneliness in Higher Education in the Arts, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 14.1 (2022), 2046956

Art in public space is fundamentally determined by who has access to the artworld. At the entrance to the artworld of today—the art academy—resides an ideal of global mobility that relates to cognitive capitalism and competitiveness but also to the repeating of rationales of white privilege and a hidden structural racism. By analysing how Higher Education in the Arts in Denmark awards “free” mobility and encourages internationalization, following the neoliberal European policies of the Bologna Process in their aim of competitiveness while at the same time having no official strategies in relation to racial diversity and recruitment, I find biopolitical lines of demarcation and structural racism within the foundational infrastructures of the Danish artworld. Based on the findings of my analysis of both educational policy documents and understandings of “fair” representation of BIPoCs in the arts in Denmark, I demonstrate how racial loneliness resides as an affective response to experiences of structural racism in the infrastructures of the arts. I suggest that racial loneliness is an interdependent affect and a product of educational documents, reforms and policies. This assumption is accompanied by the example of the artists’ collective FCNN, stressing how BIPoC student Eliyah Mesayer is isolated and subjected to tokenism in the classroom of the art academy. Informed by the increasing number of separatist BIPoC collectives offering an ongoing infrastructural performance of being “too many”, the article ends with a speculation on how to organize bodies otherwise in the infrastructures of the artworld by exceeding rationales of reasonable and adequate representability.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2022.2046956

Smedegaard Nielsen, Asta, Saving Racialized Children through Good Schooling: Media Discourses on Racialized Children’s Schooling as a Site for Upholding Danish Whiteness. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Smedegaard Nielsen, Asta, Saving Racialized Children through Good Schooling: Media Discourses on Racialized Children’s Schooling as a Site for Upholding Danish Whiteness, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7.3 (2021), 200–208

This article uses Danish media discourses on racialized children’s schooling as a lens through which to analyse how issues of kinship and family play into nation-building processes through representations of ‘the child’. The article addresses the question of the distribution of racialized children, mostly termed ‘bilingual pupils’, at Danish schools, which is a recurrent theme in the public debate. The media representation of this issue is mostly framed around an ideal of spreading the ‘bilingual pupils’ among different schools to ensure proper mixing with white Danish pupils, which is framed as securing both the educational development of the children and the prosperity of the Danish nation. Through the ideal of mixing, the nation is constituted as able to include the racialized child as an act of saving it from its heritage of racialized and classed disadvantage. A comparison with other kinds of media reporting on racialized children in Danish schooling reveals the constellation of a racialized hierarchy that works to uphold Danish whiteness and non-racism through the ideal of proper mixing. Migrant subjects who have mixed through kinship with Danish whiteness and have actively abandoned their racialized familial background seem more easily constituted as belonging in Denmark.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20020317.2021.1980275

Vertelyté, Manté, and Dorthe Staunæs, From Tolerance Work to Pedagogies of Unease: Affective Investments in Danish Antiracist Education. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Vertelyté, Manté, and Dorthe Staunæs, From Tolerance Work to Pedagogies of Unease: Affective Investments in Danish Antiracist Education, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7.3 (2021), 126–35

Antiracist pedagogies have long been conceptualized and developed by scholars, public intellectuals, teachers and pedagogues in Danish education contexts. By analysing Danish knowledge production on antiracist education from the 1980s to the present, this article traces changing understandings of race and racism in Danish education, as well as accounts for different affective tensions and investments at stake in antiracist pedagogical practice and thinking. We show how the discourse of antiracism as ‘tolerance work’ prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s evolved into an antiracist pedagogy centred on ‘creating good and positive atmospheres’, and how, from the 2000s onward, feelings of unease, embarrassment and anxiety about addressing race have become integrated in antiracist education research and practice. While the first approach towards antiracist education dwells with and use positive and joyous feelings, the second wave addresses a more uncomfortable register of affects. By analysing how different affective intensities have historically been associated with antiracist pedagogies in Denmark, we show how they are inextricable from education policies and politics.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.2003006

Vertelyté, Manté, ‘Why Are They Not Friends?’ (2022) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Vertelyté, Manté, ‘Why Are They Not Friends?’, Nordic Journal of Social Research, 13.1 (2022), 10–22

Young people’s friendships have been central to debates around minority integration in Danish society. Specifically, through schooling, students with diverse racialised-ethnic backgrounds are expected to form bonds and connections as a way to strengthen social cohesion and unity. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with education professionals in Danish schooling contexts (a comprehensive school and extracurricular schooling state institutions), this article deploys the concept of intimate technology of concern to explore how and with what effects concerns over young people’s friendships are implicated in welfare value projects of minority integration. Contributing to the literature on friendship, understood as a regulatory modality of intimacy, the article shows how, racialised figuring of friendship as both a threat and a solution, young people’s social relations are celebrated as achievements of integration and social mixing.

Keywords friendship intimate technology of concern racialisation Denmark education integration.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.18261/njsr.13.1.2

Yang, Ahrong, Racialized Forecasting. Understanding Race through Children’s (to-Be) Lived Experiences in a Danish School Context. (2021) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Yang, Ahrong, Racialized Forecasting. Understanding Race through Children’s (to-Be) Lived Experiences in a Danish School Context, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7.3 (2021), 169–78

Is it possible to address racism without mentioning race? Based on two cases from an ethnographical field study conducted in a Danish elementary school, this article investigates how students of colour (aged 10–13) predict future encounters with racism and share their concerns with how to deal with these potential encounters. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s notion of emotions and concept of past histories of contact and pushes, this article examines how to understand emotions of race when two students share their concerns about for instance, being able to defend themselves and verbalize fear of not belonging. What I am suggesting is that emotions of race are not only shaped by the students’ past experiences but that race also works through emotions of concern about the future as racialized forecasting. These racialized forecastings surface as experiences connected to the children’s black and brown bodies, where their emotions of race intersect with ideas of gender and age. The analysis will show how the children struggle to address their race experiences as they push and are being pushed by race-blind discourses, making it very difficult for the students to make sense of their feelings.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2021.1995141

Fernández, Christian, and Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen. ‘The Civic Integrationist Turn in Danish and Swedish School Politics’. (2017)

~ mortenstinus

Fernández, Christian, and Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen. ‘The Civic Integrationist Turn in Danish and Swedish School Politics’. Comparative Migration Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Physica-Verlag, Dec. 2017,

The civic integrationist turn usually refers to the stricter requirements for residence and citizenship that many states have implemented since the late 1990’s. But what of other policy spheres that are essential for the formation of citizens? Is there a civic turn in school policy? And does it follow the pattern of residence and citizenship? This article addresses these questions through a comparative study of the EU’s allegedly strictest and most liberal immigration regimes, Denmark and Sweden, respectively. The analysis shows a growing concern with citizenship education in both countries, yet with different styles and content. Citizenship education in Denmark concentrates on reproducing a historically derived core of cultural values and knowledge to which minorities are expected to assimilate, while the Swedish model subscribes to a pluralist view that stresses mutual adaptation and intercultural tolerance. Despite claims to the contrary, the analysis shows that Sweden too has experienced a civic turn.

doi:10.1186/s40878-017-0049-z. 10.1186/s40878-017-0049-z.

Thomsen, Jens Peter, Bolette Moldenhawer, and Tine Kallehave. Ethnic Differences in Education in Denmark: Survey Report. (2010) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Thomsen, Jens Peter, Bolette Moldenhawer, and Tine Kallehave. Ethnic Differences in Education in Denmark: Survey Report. EDUMIGROM, 2010.

The primary purpose of this report is to give a descriptive and analytical account of the lives of minority urban youth at the end of their primary schooling by looking at their school experiences and achievements, plans for future education and work life, attitudes towards school, and relations to peers, as well as the shaping of identity among minority students. Focusing on youth in the 8th and 9th grades in primary school in Copenhagen, Denmark, the report not only differentiates among ethnic groups in order to identify significant social patterns among groups, but also explores how ethnic differentiations intersect with other variables relating to the students’ background (gender, parents’ socio-economic status and educational level, and so on), and characteristics of everyday social life (social interaction, peer relations, etc). The report aims to contribute to a growing body of research on early identity formation and interethnic relations among young people in primary schools as a way of understanding how and why social positions of young people are structured the way they are. 

PDF: https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/?action=media.download&uuid=29EB1415-BE22-3ABB-578DDD71283F13E4

Hansen, Gro Inge. ‘”De sidder i deres egen lille gruppe ovre i hjørnet”– en pilotundersøgelse af etniske minoritetsstuderendes møde med studie- og undervisningsmiljøet på farmaceutstudiet’. (2014) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hansen, Gro Inge. ‘”De sidder i deres egen lille gruppe ovre i hjørnet”– en pilotundersøgelse af etniske minoritetsstuderendes møde med studie- og undervisningsmiljøet på farmaceutstudiet’. Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Tidsskrift, vol. 9, no. 16, 16, Mar. 2014, pp. 58–71.

I artiklen fokuseres på, hvordan studie- og undervisningsmiljøet på farmaceutstudiet på Københavns Universitet (KU) kan risikere at danne ramme for en adskillelse mellem etniske minoritetsstuderendes og etnisk danske studerendes faglige og sociale studieliv. Der argumenteres for, hvordan dette kan påvirke etniske minoritetsstuderendes uddannelsesudbytte og i værste fald bevirke, at de dropper ud af deres studie. Afslutningsvis perspektiveres omkring, hvad man kan gøre for at mindske disse skel i studie- og undervisningsmiljøet på farmaceutstudiet. Udgangspunktet for denne artikel er en kvalitativ pilotundersøgelse udført i forbindelse med et speciale om studiepraksis og pædagogisk praksis på medicinstudiet og på farmaceutstudiet på KU. 

The academic environment at the University of Copenhagen’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences may contribute to a separation between ethnic minority students and ethnic Danish students in both social and vocational settings. This article examines how this could affect ethnic minority students’ educational outcomes, and in a worst-case scenario lead to their dropout of the School of Pharmaceutical Science. . A number of suggestions to address the situation are outlined.  The article is based on a qualitative pilot analysis carried out as a part of a Master thesis about study practices and pedagogical practices in the Medicine Program at the Panum Institute and the School of Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Copenhagen.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/dut/article/view/8036.

Madsen, Lian Malai, Martha Sif Karrebæk, and Janus Spindler Møller, editors. ‘Everyday Languaging: Collaborative Research on the Language Use of Children and Youth’. (2016)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Madsen, Lian Malai, Martha Sif Karrebæk, and Janus Spindler Møller, editors. ‘Everyday Languaging: Collaborative Research on the Language Use of Children and Youth’. De Gruyter Mouton, 2016.

This book contributes to current theory building within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics by looking at the role of language in the lives, realities, and understandings of real children and youth in an urban setting. Collectively the studies amount to a comprehensive account of how urban children and youth construct, reactivate, negotiate, contest, and navigate between different linguistic and sociocultural norms and resources. 

Contents:

Martha Sif Karrebæk, Lian Malai Madsen and Janus Spindler Møller Introduction—Everyday Languaging: Collaborative research on the language use of children and youth

Martha Sif Karrebæk: Arabs, Arabic and urban languaging: Polycentricity and incipient enregisterment among primary school children in Copenhagen

Liva Hyttel-Sørensen: Gangster talk on the phone – analyses of a mass media parody of a contemporary urban vernacular in Copenhagen and its reception

Andreas Stæhr: Normativity as a social resource in social media practices

Astrid Ag: Rights and wrongs – authority in family interactions

Ulla Lundqvist: Becoming a “smart student”: The emergence and unexpected implications of one child’s social identification

Lamies Nassr: “Well, because we are the One Direction girls” – Popular culture, friendship, and social status in a peer group 

Lian Malai Madsen: ‘The Diva in the room’ – Rap music, education and discourses on integration 

Thomas Rørbeck Nørreby: Ethnic identifications in late modern Copenhagen 

Janus Spindler Møller: Discursive reactions to nationalism among adolescents in Copenhagen

Asif Agha: Growing up bilingual in Copenhagen.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/305498

Khawaja, Iram. ‘“Det Muslimske Sofa-Hjørne”: Muslimskhed, Racialisering Og Integration’. (2015)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Khawaja, Iram. ‘“Det Muslimske Sofa-Hjørne”: Muslimskhed, Racialisering Og Integration’. Pæda­gogisk Psykologisk Tidsskrift, vol. 52, no. 2, 2015, pp. 29–38,

In a high-school north of Copenhagen, teachers are expressing concern in regard to the growing number of Muslim students and their way of engaging in the school context. The students are positioning themselves in a separate corner (the sofa-corner) during breaks, and policing each other in regard to religious ideals and demands thus forming an enclave in the larger network of groupings in the high school. This article analyses the concern seen from the point of view of the professional, who in many cases feel that she has no access or any tools to intervene in the forming of the sofa-grouping. The article makes visible how the concern for the proper integration is embedded in certain racialised, religious and social processes of othering, and points towards new perspectives on how it is in practice possible to work with inclusion when one takes the power relational and structural processes of exclusion and othering into consideration. 

https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/publications/det-muslimske-sofahjoerne(7288ad12-70c4-4a5a-8a82-7b2f4c64b178).html.

https://www.skolepsykologi.dk/52–%C3%A5rgang—2015 .

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. 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/.