Fabian, Louise & Anders Lund Hansen. Common resistance against state-led stigmatization and displacement. (2020).

Fabian, Louise, & Anders Lund Hansen. Common resistance against state-led stigmatization and displacement. In G. Baeten, C. Listerborn, M. Persdotter, & E. Pull (Eds.), Housing Displacement: Conceptual and Methodological Issues (pp. 125–143). 2020. Routledge.

This chapter focuses on the role of the Danish state in stigmatizing and displacing groups from targeted common, non-profit housing estates (the so-called ghettos). It looks closer at the resistance movements, with special focus on Denmark’s largest non-profit housing estate, Gellerupparken. The chapter draws on an intersection between the literature of critical urban theory and social movement research. It highlights the increasing production of inequalities in Denmark and the concentration of precarious socio-economic groups in rental housing. The chapter explores the government’s ghetto politics, relevant policy documents, and state-led territorial stigmatization and displacement. It addresses how different actors have been trying to subvert the ghetto stigmatization through different forms of resistance such as the new social movement Almen Modstand (Common Resistance) as well as independent activists fighting against what they see as a racist politics. The ‘ghetto package’ has been met with a growing number of resistance movements and activities in Denmark.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429427046-9

Fallov, Mia Arp & Rasmus Hoffmann Birk. The ’Ghetto’ strikes back: Resisting welfare sanctions and stigmatizing categorizations in marginalized residential areas in Denmark. (2022). [PDF]

Fallov, Mia Arp, & Rasmus Hoffmann Birk. The ’Ghetto’ strikes back: Resisting welfare sanctions and stigmatizing categorizations in marginalized residential areas in Denmark. Nordic Social Work Research, 12(2), 2022, 217–228.

The Danish social housing sector is currently being restructured by national strategies that seek to combat so-called ‘parallel societies’. These strategies entail especially two things: (1) tearing down and/or privatizing social housing in marginalized and vulnerable neighbour­ hoods and (2) repressive strategies of governance which focus on ethnic minorities, restricting their choices of schools, kindergartens and interac­ tions with social services. Our argument in this article is that despite strong attempts to enforce top-down repressive and discriminatory poli­ cies, the ‘ghetto’ continually ‘strikes back’ in a double-sense: Firstly, the Danish policies meant to combat ‘ghettoization’ and ‘parallel societies’ recreate these as statistical (and governable) categories, and secondly, local housing organizations, community workers and residents engage in a struggle from below where they employ tactics to resist the most repressive elements of these urban policies. We show through empirical examples from different neighbourhoods in Denmark, how this struggle from below generate resistance in three forms: they rework classifications and understandings of the neighbourhood; they attempt to generate resilience and increase coping of marginalized groups in the face of punitive state policies; and they mediate recent tendencies to a more punitive state, and mediate and translate active forms of resistance of residents, thereby rewriting scripts of citizenship. We argue that these forms of resistance attempt to change state space production from within.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2021.1937289

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/426394707/Ghetto_strikes_back_til_VBN.pdf

Eriksson, Birgit & Anne Mette W. Nielsen. Changing Gellerup Park: Political Interventions and Aesthetic Engagement in an Exposed Social Housing Area in Denmark. (2022) [PDF]

Eriksson, Birgit & Anne Mette W. Nielsen. Changing Gellerup Park: Political Interventions and Aesthetic Engagement in an Exposed Social Housing Area in Denmark. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 31(64), 2022, 76-98.

Some low-income social housing neighborhoods are undergoing radical transformations in Denmark. Classified as “ghettos” and “parallel societies,” and marked by area-specific legislation, we identify a triple exposure in these neighborhoods. The residents are exposed to inequality, stigmatization, and discriminatory interventions. Parallel to this, cultural policies and programs have approached these same neighborhoods based on the assumption that they can be “elevated” through art. Drawing upon a broader research in art project in four social housing areas (Eriksson, Nielsen, Sørensen and Yates, 2022), this article focuses on Gellerup Park in Aarhus and considers how two site-specific art platforms address the site and time-specific conditions of the area, offering alternative relations and forms of engagement.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v31i64.134221

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)

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

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, and Rebecka Söderberg, Governing Urban Diversity through Myths of National Sameness – a Comparative Analysis of Denmark and Sweden. (2021) [PDF]

Jensen, Tina Gudrun, and Rebecka Söderberg, Governing Urban Diversity through Myths of National Sameness – a Comparative Analysis of Denmark and Sweden, Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 11.1 (2021), 5–19

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other and underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.

Design/methodology/approach Inspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.

Findings Swedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.

Originality/value The authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-06-2021-0034

Lapiņa, Linda, ‘Diversity Tourists’? Tracing Whiteness through Affective Encounters with Diversity in a Gentrifying District in Copenhagen. (2022)

Lapiņa, Linda, ‘Diversity Tourists’? Tracing Whiteness through Affective Encounters with Diversity in a Gentrifying District in Copenhagen, Social & Cultural Geography, 23.4 (2022), 578–97.

This article develops the diversity tourist as an analytical figure to explore how middle-class whiteness emerges through encounters with racialized diversity in gentrifying urban space. Drawing on interviews with white middle-class Danish residents in Copenhagen’s Nordvest district, I examine how whiteness takes shape through affective ambivalence and negotiations of proximity and distance. My informants live in Nordvest, but see themselves as privileged tourists. They perceive diverse Others as true locals whose presence not only stimulates and entertains them, but also facilitates self-development, increased awareness and inclusive pedagogy. Moreover, the local spaces and people of Nordvest represent a different or superior reality and promise an escape from white, gentrified Copenhagen. I collect these practices in the figure of the diversity tourist to show how a particular brand of Danish middle-class whiteness emerges through embracing diversity and reminiscing over one’s own privileges vis-à-vis racialized, less advantaged people and spaces. I examine how, despite attempts at transcendence, this whiteness feels claustrophobic, finding itself in a limbo, trapped by its own gaze. The figure of diversity tourist contributes to studies of whiteness and gentrification, capturing how whiteness and intersectional privilege are enlaced in space and fueled by affective ambivalence.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2020.1783349

Lundsteen, Martin. Displacing the Other to Unite the Nation: The Parallel Society Legislation in Denmark. (2023)

Lundsteen, Martin, Displacing the Other to Unite the Nation: The Parallel Society Legislation in Denmark, European Urban and Regional Studies, 2023.

In 2018, the then right-wing government in Denmark led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen and supported by the extreme right-wing party Danish People’s Party presented new legislation to end ‘parallel societies’ in Denmark by toughening the criminal law, enforcing Danish knowledge and nursery school assistance to toddlers, and, more importantly for this article, a series of urban interventions in ‘ghetto areas’ considered as such mainly when the proportion of immigrants and descendants from non-Western countries exceeded 50 per cent. Until recently research has focused on either the discursive elements of the ‘ghetto politics’ in Denmark or the urban interventions from an architectural or urban planning point of view. However, newfangled research deal with the entwined economic elements. In this article, I compare the different developmental plans proposed in the affected areas because of the legislation, with an aim to reach further and point at the inherent elements of urban b/ordering, that is, measures taken to attain social order and gain legitimacy by demarcating categories of people to incorporate some and exclude others through urban space. Indeed, through this comparison, I conclude that the ghetto legislation is a compelling example of the urban b/ordering inherent to the politics and dynamics of current liberal capitalist social democracies. It is a social experiment that remodels the geography of Denmark in terms that recall the eugenic and hygienic social and urban policies of the 19th century and form part of a worrying pattern that may have consequences that go beyond the stated ones.

DOI: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09697764231165202

Risager, Bjarke Skærlund, Territorial Stigmatization and Housing Commodification under Racial Neoliberalism: The Case of Denmark’s ‘Ghettos’. (2022)

Risager, Bjarke Skærlund, Territorial Stigmatization and Housing Commodification under Racial Neoliberalism: The Case of Denmark’s ‘Ghettos’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2022, 0308518X221141427

The relation between racialization and neoliberalism is relatively unexplored in urban geography, especially in the context of social democratic welfare regimes. This article aims to bridge this gap by applying the concept of racial neoliberalism, here referring to a co-constitutive relation between racialization and neoliberalism, to Denmark. Conceiving the country’s so-called ”ghetto” politics as an expression of racial neoliberalism, the article retraces the development of this politics over the first two decades of the 21st century. I argue that territorial stigmatization and commodification of marginalized non-profit housing areas have been two co-constitutive expressions of racial neoliberalism that have intensified during this historical period. Examining three key policy moments through various grey literature, the article demonstrates how stigmatization has served to justify commodification, while the failure of the latter has been followed by intensified and bureaucratized stigmatization leading to new commodification efforts until culminating in the infamous 2018 ”Ghetto Law”.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221141427

Rutt, Rebecca L., A Green, Livable Copenhagen in the Shadow of Racializing, Neoliberalizing Politics. (2021)

Rutt, Rebecca L., A Green, Livable Copenhagen in the Shadow of Racializing, Neoliberalizing Politics, in The Green City and Social Injustice, ed. by Isabelle Anguelovski and James J. T. Connolly (Routledge, 2021), pp. 241–54

Copenhagen is often portrayed as a sustainable and livable city, echoing Denmark’s longstanding reputation as a leader in environmental and social welfare protections, including affordable housing. Yet, neoliberal and racializing trends at the national level are undermining social and environmental justice across the country. In Copenhagen, these intertwining trends manifest in the dominance of a green growth rhetoric in the city’s urban sustainability and livability agendas alongside the dismantling of housing protections, leading to skyrocketing prices and the uprooting of more vulnerable residents. Focusing on the Nørrebro neighborhood, this chapter sheds light on local manifestations of national trends through several recent struggles over the right to the neighborhood. These struggles illustrate how processes of ecological gentrification are shaped by broader trends of neoliberal and racializing politics that manifest in urban governance, but that the tireless efforts of resident-activists may stem the tide and avoid the co-option of urban green spaces.

Keywords the urban development pattern of the city and neighborhood: sustainability planning; livable city planning; green growth; urban neoliberalization; racialization the urban greening of the neighborhood/city: climate resilience; smart technology; urban farming; entrepreneurial greening; green design the inequalities at stake: green gentrification; housing exclusion; environmental injustice; racializing politics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003183273-24

Larsen, Troels Schultz. ‘Copenhagen’s West End a “Paradise Lost”: The Political Production of Territorial Stigmatization in Denmark’. (2014) [PDF]

Larsen, Troels Schultz. ‘Copenhagen’s West End a “Paradise Lost”: The Political Production of Territorial Stigmatization in Denmark’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, vol. 46, no. 6, SAGE Publications Ltd, June 2014, pp. 1386–1402.

Why have many of the prestige developments in Copenhagen’s West End built during the golden days of the welfare state morphed into neglected and stigmatized territories? This paper seeks to answer this question by deploying a field-analytical approach inspired by Bourdieu and Wacquant. The emergence of advanced marginality and the diffusion of spatial defamation in Copenhagen are products of the historical struggles over space occurring in the field of housing and the bureaucratic field. To grasp social transformations at ground level in neglected urban areas, we need to exit those areas and scrutinize the role of the state in the (re)production of territorial stigma. This paper shows how the processes of spatial concentration of dispossessed households and the defamation of their neighbourhoods are closely linked to the institutionalization of a dualized and asymmetrical housing market and a dualizing urban policy which have converged to privilege private ownership at the cost of nonprofit housing for the past fifty years.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1068/a45640

Johansen, Mette Louise. In the Borderland – Palestinian Parents Navigating Danish Welfare State Interventions. (2013)

Johansen, Mette Louise. In the Borderland – Palestinian Parents Navigating Danish Welfare State Interventions. Dissertation. Aarhus Universitet, 2013,

This PhD thesis offers an account on processes of marginalization at the interface between the Danish welfare state and migrant families of Palestinian descent living in the largest so-called migrant ghetto in Denmark, Gellerupparken. Empirically, the thesis asks how marginalized Palestinian refugee parents with troubled children perceive and cope with welfare state interventions in order to keep their family together. The thesis focuses on Palestinian refugee parents who are marginalized in the Danish state and society as well as in the Palestinian community and ‘ghetto’ population in Gellerupparken, and who may in this sense may be defined as ‘extra-marginalized’. A basic point of departure for the thesis is that the study of marginalized citizens in Denmark can shed light on general contemporary state-society relationships. A key analytical optic in interpreting marginalization rests on Veena Das and Deborah Poole’s (2004) notion of state-margins as presenting the wild and uncivilized counterpart and necessary opposition to the state. According to Das and Poole the state and the margin is continuously redefined in opposition to each other through the invocation of images of the proper citizen and society (Das and Poole 2004: 8). The thesis explores the constitutive mechanisms characterizing the nature of the relationship between the Danish welfare state and the marginalized Palestinian parents in Gellerupparken, and revolves around issues on parenting, intimate everyday lives, and proximate state control. The thesis is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Palestinian families whose children are approached as troubles and a threat by the Danish authorities. The research was conducted in Gellerupparken in 2009 and 2010. The neighborhood is characterized by a heightened commerce and interaction between different ethnic groups, but it is also known as a public outrage on the basis of increasing crime-rates, violence, social problems, and socio-economically disadvantaged families living off the Danish labor market and in isolation from the larger civil society. Since 2005, the housing project has officially been a ‘ghetto’, fulfilling certain criteria and calling for thorough state intervention and marked by the presence of a vast number of welfare institutions, and policing and surveillance.  The thesis proposes three central arguments: First, I argue that the relationship between the state and the margin is fundamentally unstable. This is so because both the state and the margin appear as internally diverse and unstable with no clear social, cultural, or internal practice-based cohesion, and because the boundaries that demarcate their divide may be just as porous as they may be impermeable. The highly unstable relationship between state and margin is mirrored in the Palestinian parents’ ambiguous practices of searching for the state when it is not there to meet their needs, and simultaneously trying to escape the state when it is perceived to be ‘intruding’ into the family in ways that are not welcome.  Secondly, I argue that marginalization is enacted between state, family, and community, and we need to include the complexity of concerns at stake in this triangular interrelationship in order to understand how marginality is locally produced. Empirically, the thesis shows that the parents perceive their parental position as caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place – between the practices and expectations of the state, the community, and their own children. This position is imbued with insecurity, despair, and a continuous quest for possible ways to keep the family together.  Thirdly, I argue that ways of coping with the interrelationships between state, community, and family is constitutive of the parents’ subjectivity. The thesis shows that borderland formations between these different agencies form the basis for the parents’ imperative to keep the family together. This struggle implies keeping the closest family from being split up and preventing the physical distance, absence, or loss of a family member from the home in the face of ‘threats’ of imprisonment, removal of children, punitive expulsion of their sons from school, or eviction of the families from their homes. It also implies avoiding break-ups between family members, including between parents and children. Furthermore, to the parents keeping the family together entails keeping relatives from breaking down. In this context, the families are under pressure from impulses that they perceive to be threatening the family’s self-preservation, such as severe illness, depression and despair.

https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/projects/phd-project-in-the-borderland–palestinian-parents-navigating-danish-welfare-state-interventions(1b244739-d48d-442b-99be-3ef35460ed33).html. https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/projects/phd-project-in-the-borderland–palestinian-parents-navigating-danish-welfare-state-interventions(1b244739-d48d-442b-99be-3ef35460ed33).html.

Jepsen, Marie Blomgren, and Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen. Ufrivillig Fraflytning Fra Udsatte Boligområder. (2018) [PDF]

Jepsen, Marie Blomgren, and Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen. Ufrivillig Fraflytning Fra Udsatte Boligområder. Statens Byggeforskningsinstitut, 2018,

Den danske debat om udsatte boligbebyggelser har fyldt meget i offentligheden; tidligere i år lancerede regeringen en storstilet indsats for en gang for alle at afskaffe de socialt belastede boligbebyggelser: ”Ét Danmark uden parallelsamfund. Ingen ghettoer i 2030.” Blandt midlerne hertil er nedrivninger og bortsalg af almene familieboliger samt ufrivillige flytninger af beboere i de berørte bebyggelser.  Boligselskabernes Landsorganisation (BL) bad derfor i august SBi om at tilvejebringe en summarisk oversigt over den tilgængelige viden på feltet. Arbejdet blev igangsat september og afsluttet med månedens udgang. Der er derfor tale om en første afdækning af viden på feltet, der på ingen måde kan siges at være dækkende. Den korte tidsfrist for materialeindsamling og rapportskrivning har betydet, at rapporten dels er baseret på forfatternes egen viden samt gode råd og tips fra kolleger i ind- og udland. Rapporten er udarbejdet af videnskabelig assistent Marie Blomgren Jepsen og seniorforsker Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen.

PDF: https://sbi.dk/Pages/Ufrivillig-fraflytning-fra-udsatte-boligomraader.aspx.

Jensen, Tina Gudrun. Sameksistens: hverdagsliv og naboskab i et multietnisk boligområde. (2016)

Jensen, Tina Gudrun. Sameksistens: hverdagsliv og naboskab i et multietnisk boligområde. 2016.

I den offentlige debat om indvandring og integration tales der ofte om ghettodannelse og parallelsamfund , og der skelnes tydeligt mellem os og dem . Her fremstilles etniske grupper som segregerede enklaver i samfundet, men virkeligheden er langt mere nuanceret. Mange af de boligområder, der hentydes til, er nemlig multietniske boligområder, og her bor bl.a. mange etniske danskere.  I både den offentlige debat og i forskningen om indvandring og integration i urbane rum i Danmark overser man ofte den interaktion, der foregår mellem mennesker med forskellige etniske baggrunde. Denne bog handler netop om interetniske relationer i sociale boligområder.  Hermed udfylder bogen et hul i dansk forskning om indvandring og integration og lægger sig op ad den fremvoksende internationale antropologiske, sociologiske og humangeografiske litteratur om udfoldelsen af interetniske relationer i hverdagsliv.  Bogen er baseret på et etnografisk feltarbejde i Grønnevang i form af deltagerobservation og interview med beboere og andre personer i området. Grønnevang er et større multietnisk socialt boligområde i København, som er beboet af omkring 50 procent etniske danskere og 50 procent etniske minoriteter. Gennem autentiske historier beskriver bogen de personer, der lever i boligområdet, og deres indbyrdes relationer.  Bogens omdrejningspunkter er naboskabets forskelligartede relationer og hverdagspraksisser samt magtforholdet mellem beboere, som udgør etnisk minoritet og majoritet.

https://samfundslitteratur.dk/bog/sameksistens.

Jensen, Tina Gudrun. Naboskab i multietniske boligområder. (2016) [PDF]

Jensen, Tina Gudrun. Naboskab i multietniske boligområder. København: Boligsocialnet, 2016.

Denne bog stiller skarpt på naboskab blandt beboere med forskellige etniske baggrunde, som lever i et såkaldt ’multietnisk boligområde’. ’Multietnisk’ er en betegnelse, som anvendes om boligområder, hvor andelen af beboere med etnisk minoritetsbaggrund overstiger 40 %.  Bogen henvender sig først og fremmest til forskellige praktikere på området, som for eksempel er beskæftiget inden for det boligsociale område, byplanlægning, arkitektur samt aktører på lokale og nationale politikområder.  Bogen er et resultat af et forskningsprojekt, der omhandler interetniske naboskabsrelationer. Projektet er en del af en forskningsalliance om ”social sammenhængskraft og etnisk diversitet”, som blev gennemført i 2010-2015.  Bogen beskæftiger sig med de sociale hverdagspraksisser, som beboere i multietniske boligområder deler, blandt andet som naboerne. Fokus ligger i den forbindelse især på sted, rum, hverdagsliv og sociale relationer. Hermed bidrager bogen med ny empirisk såvel som teoretisk viden om, hvad det indebærer at leve sammen i et multietnisk boligområde. Emnet fremhæves indledningsvist som et overset emne i nyere forskning og i den offentlige debat om indvandring og integration i byrum i Danmark.  Et af bogens hovedargumenter er, at livet i et multietnisk boligområde indebærer mindre drama end mange fremstillinger ofte peger på.  Bogen peger i stedet på, at denne slags boligområder omfatter en indre styrke og robusthed, fordi der er mange forskellige former for dagligdagskontakt mellem beboerne, hvor det at ’dele steder’ kan medvirke til at fremme relationer.

PDF: https://viden.sl.dk/media/8933/naboskab-i-multietniske-boligomraader.pdf

Bech-Danielsen, Claus, and Gunvor Christensen. Boligområder i bevægelse: Fortællinger om fysiske og boligsociale indsatser i anledning af Landsbyggefondens 50 års jubilæum. (2017) [PDF]

Bech-Danielsen, Claus, and Gunvor Christensen. Boligområder i bevægelse: Fortællinger om fysiske og boligsociale indsatser i anledning af Landsbyggefondens 50 års jubilæum. Landsbyggefonden, 2017,

Landsbyggefonden fylder 50 år den 6. april 2017, og det har vi valgt at fejre med udgivelsen af denne bog, der sætter fokus på fondens aktiviteter indenfor renoveringer og boligsociale indsatser. Fonden varetager  også  mange  andre  opgaver.  Den har  til  opgave  at  administrere kommunernes grundkapitallån, opkræve bidrag på de udamortiserede lån,  sikre  de  elektroniske  indberetninger  af  sektorens  mange  regnskaber,  foretage  regnskabsanalyser,  udvikle  benchmarkværktøjer,  udarbejde  styringsrap-porter til styringsdialogerne i kommunerne, sikre løbende huslejeindberetninger, så staten hver måned kan beregne boligydelse og boligsikring, udarbejde statistikker og meget mere. Alt dette kan ses på Landsbyggefondens hjemmeside. Alle disse opgaver er uhyre vigtige, og når vi i denne bog har valgt at fokusere på  renoveringer  og  boligsocialt  arbejde,  så  er  det,  fordi  disse  aktiviteter  har  en  direkte betydning for de enkelte beboeres hverdag, for byernes udvikling og for velfærdssamfundets  funktion. Der er almene boliger – familieboliger, ældreboliger og ungdomsboliger – over hele landet,  og  Landsbyggefondens  støtte  til  renoveringer  er  også  fordelt  over  hele landet. Alt fra afhjælpning af skimmelproblemer i ældre boliger, omdannelse af store montagebyggerier fra tresserne og til at omdanne treetagers blokke til rækkehuse i yderkommuner, hvor affolkning har reduceret behovet for boliger. Landbyggefonden sikrer også boligsociale indsatser i udsatte områder som fx. lektiecafeer,  fritidsjob  til  de  unge  mennesker  m.v.  Det  drejer  sig  om  mange  hundrede aktiviteter i mere end hundrede boligområder. Når  man  skal  skrive  en  bog  om  et  så  stort  område,  så  er  man  nødt  til  at  prioritere og belyse generelle udviklingstræk med konkrete eksempler, som kan give  et  dækkende  billede.  Det  kræver  indsigt  og  overblik  over  emnet,  og  derfor  har Landsbyggefonden bedt to af de mest indsigtsfulde forskere på feltet om at skrive jubilæumsbogen for fonden, nemlig Gunvor Christensen, der er sociolog, og  Claus  Bech-Danielsen,  der  er  arkitekt  og  professor  ved  Statens  Byggeforskningsinstitut, Aalborg Universitet.

PDF: https://lbf.dk/om-lbf/publikationer/2017-boligomraader-i-bevaegelse/.

Andersen, John, and John Pløger. ‘The Dualism of Urban Governance in Denmark’. (2007)

Andersen, John, and John Pløger. ‘The Dualism of Urban Governance in Denmark’. European Planning Studies, vol. 15, no. 10, Routledge, Nov. 2007, pp. 1349–1367.

The article argues that the present Danish urban policy and urban democracy can be characterized by a striking duality and tension between: (1) Participatory empowering welfare oriented community strategies, which targets deprived districts and neighbourhoods, which are based on notions of the inclusive city. This trend is founded on priorities of radical democracy, social justice, inclusion and citizens empowerment; (2) Neo-elitist/corporative market driven strategic regional and global growth strategies, which are based on notions of the Entrepreneurial Globalized City and where urban policy becomes a question of facilitation of the “growth machine” and neo-liberalized urban authoritarianism. The article discusses dilemmas for overcoming the growing tension between elitist neo-corporate growth regimes, which are in operation via “Quangoes” and closed elite networks, and community empowerment and welfare oriented policy in the age of globalization. Taking the stand of community empowerment and welfare policy, the article conclusively discusses ways to shape a new inclusive politics of difference including using “positive selectivism” as part of an empowerment strategy.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310701550827.

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. (2020)

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. i Et ulydigt arkiv: Udvalgte tekster af Sara Ahmed, Eds. Daniel Nikolaj Madsen, Eva Obelitz Rode, Lea Hee Ja Kramhøft, and Mette A. E. Kim-Larsen, Forlaget Nemo, 2020, 11–22.

Et ulydigt arkiv er syv af Sara Ahmeds artikler fra de sidste 20 år samlet og for første gang udgivet på dansk. Teksterne arbejder med figurer som ’den feministiske glædesdræber’, ’den melankolske immigrant’, ’det egenrådige barn’ og ’den fremmede’ indenfor emner som racisme, feminisme, klagen, m.m. Samlingens tekster skifter kontinuerligt mellem det teoretiske og det hverdagslige; mellem filosofi og popkultur; mellem det strukturelle og personlige erfaringer. 

Et ulydigt arkiv indeholder derudover et helt nyt forord dedikeret til denne udgave samt et introducerende forord af lektor Mons Bissenbakker og lektor Michael Nebeling, som viser Ahmeds tænknings relevans i dansk kontekst.

https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/en-f%C3%B8lelsernes-grammatik-og-politik.

https://www.forlagetnemo.dk/butik/ulydigtarkiv

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Ghetto-Society-Problem: A Discourse Analysis of Nationalist Othering: Ghetto-Society-Problem’. (2016) [PDF]

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Ghetto-Society-Problem: A Discourse Analysis of Nationalist Othering: Ghetto-Society-Problem’. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 16, no. 1, Apr. 2016, pp. 83–99.

This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government’s strategy against ghettoization (The Ghetto Plan). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analytical framework, the analysis argues that the ghetto marks an antagonistic anti-identity to Danish society. This discursive construction of the ghetto against society has the effect of confirming Danish identity, while at the same time precluding possibilities of the ghetto’s integration in society. Highlighting these implications, the study feeds into societal debates on integration, and suggests a framework for studying nationalist othering in a discourse analytical perspective. 

doi:10.1111/sena.12173.

PDF: https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/124980286/Ghetto_Society_Problem_Accepted_manuscript_2016.pdf .

Herby, Jonas, and Ulrik Haagen Nielsen. Omfanget Af Forskelsbehandling Af Nydanskere: Et Felteksperiment På Lejeboligmarkedet. (2015) [PDF]

Herby, Jonas, and Ulrik Haagen Nielsen. Omfanget Af Forskelsbehandling Af Nydanskere: Et Felteksperiment På Lejeboligmarkedet. Holte: Ankestyrelsen, 3 Nov. 2015,

Boligsøgende med mellemøstligt klingende navne skal i snit søge om 27 % flere boliger end boligsøgende med et danskklingende navn for at have ligeså gode chancer for at få tilbudt en lejebolig eller en fremvisning. Det vil sige, at når en boligsøgende med et danskklingende navn har sendt 4 ansøgninger, skal en boligsøgende med et mellemøstligt klingende navn søge om 5 boliger for at have lige så gode muligheder for at se eller få den tilbudt.

PDF: https://ast.dk/filer/ankestyrelsen-generelt/antidiskriminationsenheden/rapport-om-etnisk-diskrimination-pa-boligmarkedet.pdf.

Freiesleben, Anna Mikaela von. ‘Et Danmark af parallelsamfund: segregering, ghettoisering og social sammenhængskraft : parallelsamfundet i dansk diskurs 1968-2013 – fra utopi til dystopi’ (2015) [PDF]

Freiesleben, Anna Mikaela von. Et Danmark af parallelsamfund: segregering, ghettoisering og social sammenhængskraft : parallelsamfundet i dansk diskurs 1968-2013 – fra utopi til dystopi : Ph.d.-afhandling. Diss. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet, 2015.

The parallel societyin Danish discourse is a concept often taken for granted without further scrutiny. The dominant discourse often portrays the parallel society as a result of ethnic minority segregation, especially Muslim, and thus, as both a hindrance to integration and as a threat to the social cohesion of the classic nation state. This discourse, however,is relatively new; in fact it only enteredDanish debate in the late 1990s. But what is the concept of parallel societies? How is the concept constructed in current Danish discourse? And what is the discursively connection between parallel societies, ethnic minority segregation, ghettoisation and social cohesion? These aresome ofthe questions this dissertation set out to answer.

By combining conceptual historyanddiscourse analysis, the dissertation analyses the concept of the parallel society in Danish discourse in the period from 1968-2013. The analysisreveals that the concept in a Danish context was most likely introducedin 1968 as a political strategy, and offered as another term for the left wing ideals of ‘alternative societies’. Yet, the concept was not very prevalent in Danish discourse until 1998 when the Danish member of the European Parliament, Mogens Camre,re-introduced it. This time, however, the term was used to characterize segregated Muslim communities, which Camre perceived as a threat to the social cohesion of the Danish nation state. This particular understanding of the concept of parallel society bear resemblance withthe German notionof Parallelgesellschaft. Developed during the 1990s, it quicklybecame a political catch phrase in discourses general skeptical towardsimmigration and integrationin Germany. In Denmark, the termwas re-cycled in much the same fashion; as an argument against immigration and multicultural policies, and as a ‘proof’ that integration had failed. In theperiod since the late 1960s,I have identifiedthree main discourses within a Danish usage of the term which I label: the Utopian Discourse, the Descriptive Discourse, and the Dystopian Discourse. I proceed to name the Dystopian Discourse as the dominant discourse in Denmark today. I characterize thisas a discourse about the cultural and/or religious ‘other’,who is perceived to have withdrawn into self-segregated ghettos, thus forming parallel societies which are seen as a hindranceto their integration and thus threatenssocial cohesion.

In order to examine the dominant discourse further, and discuss the link between (self-)segregation, ghettoisation and social cohesion, the dissertation also analyses the concept of the “ghetto”as it developed from Medieval Venice as a denotation of forced Jewish segregation, to poor black neighbourhoods in the United States. The concept of the ghetto then travelled back to Europe,where it became a denotation for socially deprived immigrant neighbourhoods. Ialsoexamine current research within ethnic minority segregationto discuss the link between segregation and (lack of) integration. In order to examine how the discursive linkbetween parallel societies, ethnic minority segregation and social cohesion is created, I further examinepolitical debates from the Danish parliament, Folketinget,andpublic debates, especially focusing on three recent events: The political debate aboutthe so called “Ghetto criteria”,and the public and political debates that followed the so called “Vollsmose-case” and the “Christmas Tree-case” from 2012. Thethreecases position Muslim residents of Danish neighbourhoods as a deviant ‘other’ who has withdrawn into closed parallel societies. Furthermore, the actionsof the ‘Muslim’ residents(storming a local emergency room and voting ‘no’ to a Christmas Tree) is viewed asa result of their neighbourhood, thus marking the neighbourhooda‘spoiled space’. With this dissertation I hope to cast new light upon a concept many considers as a truism, andopen the field for other discourses, interpretations, and discussions.

DANSK:

Parallelsamfundet bliver ofte taget for givet i dansk diskurs som en betegnelse for segregerede indvandrersamfund (fortrinsvis muslimske) med ’andre’ normer og værdieroguden kontakt til det omgivende majoritetssamfund. Parallelsamfundet opfattes derfor ofte som en hindring for integration og som en trussel mod sammenhængskraften. Dette er dog en relativt ny måde, at anvende begrebet på. Først fra slutningen af 1990’erne er begrebet parallelsamfund blevet anvendt i denne betydning i en dansk sammenhæng, og først i løbet af 00’erne slog denne diskurs for alvor igennem.

Denne afhandling sætter fokus på begrebet parallelsamfund, der indtil nu har været et ubeskrevet blad i en dansk forskningssammenhæng. Med udgangspunkt i begrebshistorie og diskursanalyse spørger denne afhandling blandt andet: På hvilken måde begrebet parallelsamfund er blevet konstrueret diskursivt i den danske politiske og offentlige debat i perioden 1968-2013, herunder, hvornår er det opstået og,hvorledes hardettransformeret sig? Hvilken diskurs om parallelsamfund er dominerende i dag? Hvordanoghvornår erden gledet ind i sproget som en selvfølgelighed? Og sidst men ikke mindst, hvordan hænger parallelsamfund i denne dominerende diskurs sammen med forståelser af etniske minoriteters boligmæssige segregering, ghettoisering og social sammenhængskraft?

Analysen anskueliggør, at begrebet i en dansk kontekst blev introducereti 1968 som en politisk strategi, der skulle bruges som et alternativt begreb til venstrefløjens ’alternative samfund’. Det var dogsandsynligvisikke særligt fremtrædende i dansk diskurs indtil slutningen af 1990’erne, hvor Mogens Camre, dengang medlem af Europaparlamentet for Socialdemokraterne, genintroducerede begrebet som en betegnelse for segregerede indvandrersamfund, som han så som udgørende en trussel mod den danske nationalstat. Denne særlige forståelse af parallelsamfundet har meget tilfælles med det tyske begreb Parallelgesellschaft, der blev udviklet i midten af 1990’erne. Det var hurtigt blevet et politisk slagord i indvandrerkritiske debatter i Tyskland. I Danmark bruges begrebet i dag på stort set samme måde: som et argument mod indvandring og multikulturalisme, og som et ’bevis’ for, at integrationen har fejlet. Begrebet har derfor i en dansk kontekst transformeret sig fra et (i teorien) værdifrit sociologisk begreb til en normativog politiseret term. Jeg identificerer tre diskurser, der er blevet aktiverede i perioden 1968-2013, som jeg benævner: den utopiske diskurs,den deskriptivediskursog den dystopiske diskurs, og jeg udpegerden dystopiske diskurs somden dominerende diskurs i dag. Det er denne diskurs, der oftestaktiveres i debatter om indvandring og integration, som et billede på selvsegregering, ghettoisering og mangel på sammenhængskraft.

For at kunne studere denne diskursive konstruktion yderligere, undersøger afhandlingen dernæst: (1) ghettobegrebet sådan som det har udviklet sig siden middelalderens Venedig, over USA og til aktuelle danske og udenlandske debatter om ghettoisering. (2) Den aktuelle forskning inden for boligmæssig segregering, og (3) politiske og offentlige diskurser om ghettoisering og parallelsamfund. Disse diskurser tager afsæt i tre aktuelle sager: (a) den politiske debat om ghettokriterierne, med særligt fokus på det såkaldte ’etnicitetskriterium’. Samtde politiske og offentlige debatter om (b) Vollsmosesagenog (c) Juletræssagen, beggefra 2012. Disse debatter konstruerer bl.a. det multietniske boligområde som et ’spoiled space’, og ser beboernes handlinger (”parallelsamfund”, angreb på en skadestue og afvisningen af et juletræ) som et resultat afderes boligområde (ghettoen).

PDF: https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/160573902/Ph.d._2016_Freiesleben.pdf. https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/160573902/Ph.d._2016_Freiesleben.pdf.

Seemann, Anika. ‘The Danish “Ghetto Initiatives” and the Changing Nature of Social Citizenship, 2004–2018’. (2020) [PDF]

Seemann, Anika. ‘The Danish “Ghetto Initiatives” and the Changing Nature of Social Citizenship, 2004–2018’. Critical Social Policy, SAGE Publications Ltd, Dec. 2020,

This article critically examines the Danish ‘ghetto initiatives’ of 2004, 2010, 2013 and 2018, with a particular focus on their implications for ‘social citizenship’. Its approach is twofold: firstly, it explores how each of the four major ghetto initiatives constructed ghettos and their residents as a problem for the welfare state, and what policy measures were proposed to address the problems identified. Secondly, it examines the legislative changes that resulted from each of the ghetto initiatives and assesses their implications for social citizenship. In doing so, it relates its findings to the different developmental stages of social citizenship in Danish welfare state history. The article argues that the ghetto initiatives have led to an unprecedented spatialization and ethnicization of social citizenship which mark a radical departure from the guiding principles of post-1945 Danish welfare thought and practice.

doi:10.1177/0261018320978504.

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0261018320978504

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Ghetto–Society–Problem: A Discourse Analysis of Nationalist Othering’. (2016)

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Ghetto–Society–Problem: A Discourse Analysis of Nationalist Othering’. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 83–99.

This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government’s strategy against ghettoization (The Ghetto Plan). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analytical framework, the analysis argues that the ghetto marks an antagonistic anti-identity to Danish society. This discursive construction of the ghetto against society has the effect of confirming Danish identity, while at the same time precluding possibilities of the ghetto’s integration in society. Highlighting these implications, the study feeds into societal debates on integration, and suggests a framework for studying nationalist othering in a discourse analytical perspective.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12173.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sena.12173.

Lapina, Linda. ‘“Cultivating Integration”? Migrant Space-Making in Urban Gardens’. (2017)

Lapina, Linda. ‘“Cultivating Integration”? Migrant Space-Making in Urban Gardens’. Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 38, no. 6, Routledge, Nov. 2017, pp. 621–636.

Organized cultural encounters manage difference, conduct, time and space. Yet, alternative social spaces emerge besides these scripts. This article explores migrant space-making in integration gardens, an urban gardening association in Copenhagen aiming to ‘dismantle social and cultural boundaries’. The space of the gardens is multilayered. Firstly, it operates as an integration grid – a homogenizing-organized cultural encounter evolving around a foreigner–Dane binary. However, the gardens also emerge as a web of gardening, centered around plants and gardening practices, breaching multiple (hi)stories, locations, relationships, and materialities. The article juxtaposes the spatiotemporal logics of the integration grid and the web of gardening, analyzing the possibilities for action and relating they afford. The analysis contributes to theorizations of organized cultural encounters by highlighting the embodied, affective human and non-human agencies in divergent space-making practices. Discussing these multidirectional spaces, the article links conceptualizations of agency, bodies, affectivity, time and space.

doi:10.1080/07256868.2017.1386630.

Lapina, Linda. Making Senses of Nordvest Tracing the Spaces, Bodies and Affects of a Gentrifyingneighborhood in Copenhagen. (2017) [PDF]

Lapina, Linda. Making Senses of Nordvest Tracing the Spaces, Bodies and Affects of a Gentrifyingneighborhood in Copenhagen. Roskilde: Dissertation. Roskilde University, 2017.

This thesis emerges from an ethnographic study of Nordvest, a district in Copenhagen. I came to know Nordvest as an area undergoing multiple changes. Nordvest was known, sensed and experienced as, among other things, “diverse” and multicultural; socially disadvantaged; a “municipality garbage bin”; an up-and-coming, gentrifying area; and peripheral and outside, or not quite “Copenhagen.” These modalities of knowing and experiencing Nordvest were mutually interlinked and emotionally polyvalent. I set out to examine how everyday social spaces in Nordvest constrained and shaped inequalities, processes of in- and exclusion, and processes of majoritization and minoritization, in particular pertaining to racialization, class, and Danishness. This thesis revolves around four research articles. Each article can be conceived as an optical device, a prism, that sheds and breaks different kinds of light on various spaces, presences and social processes in Nordvest.

https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/publications/making-senses-of-nordvest-tracing-the-spaces-bodies-and-affects-o

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/32196657/Making_Senses_of_Nordvest_Tracing_the_spaces_bodies_and_affects_of_a_gentrifying_neighborhood_in_Copenhagen

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘“Grounded” Politics: Manifesting Muslim Identity as a Political Factor and Localized Identity in Copenhagen’. (2012)

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘“Grounded” Politics: Manifesting Muslim Identity as a Political Factor and Localized Identity in Copenhagen’. Ethnicities, vol. 12, no. 5, SAGE Publications, Oct. 2012, pp. 603–622.

A prominent strand within current migration research argues that, to understand the participation of immigrants in their host societies, we must focus on their incorporation into the cities in which they settle. This article narrows the perspective further by focusing on the role that immigrants play within one particular neighbourhood: Nørrebro in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. The article introduces the concept of grounded politics to analyse how groups of Muslim immigrants in Nørrebro use the space, relationships and history of the neighbourhood for identity political statements. The article further describes how national political debates over the Muslim presence in Denmark affect identity political manifestations within Nørrebro. By using Duncan Bell’s concept of mythscape (Bell, 2003), the article shows how some political actors idealize Nørrebro’s past to contest the present ethnic and religious diversity of the neighbourhood and, further, to frame what they see as the deterioration of genuine Danish identity.

doi:10.1177/1468796811432839.