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

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

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

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

Cengiz, Paula-Manuela, & Leena Eklund Karlsson. Portrayal of Immigrants in Danish Media—A Qualitative Content Analysis. (2021) [PDF]

Cengiz, Paula-Manuela, & Leena Eklund Karlsson. Portrayal of Immigrants in Danish Media—A Qualitative Content Analysis. Societies, 11(2), 2021, Article 2.

Media coverage can affect audiences’ perceptions of immigrants, and can play a role in determining the content of public policy agendas, the formation of prejudices, and the prevalence of negative stereotyping. This study investigated the way in which immigrants are represented in the Danish media, which terms are used, what issues related to immigrants and immigration are discussed and how they are described, and whose voices are heard. The data consisted of media articles published in the two most widely read Danish newspapers in 2019. Inductive qualitative content analysis was conducted. The portrayal of immigrants was generally negative. Overall, immigrants were portrayed as economic, cultural and security threats to the country. The most salient immigrant groups mentioned in the media were non-Westerners, Muslims, and people ‘on tolerated stay’. Integration, xenophobia and racial discrimination were the three immigrant-related issues most frequently presented by the media. The media gave voice mainly to politicians and immigrant women. The material showed that Danes have a strong affinity for ‘Danishness’, which the papers explained as a major barrier to the integration and acceptance of immigrants in Denmark.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11020045

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

Spaas, Caroline et al. Mental Health of Refugee and Non-Refugee Migrant Young People in European Secondary Education: The Role of Family Separation, Daily Material Stress and Perceived Discrimination in Resettlement. (2022) [PDF]

Spaas, Caroline, An Verelst, Ines Devlieger, Sanni Aalto, Arnfinn Andersen, Natalie Durbeej, and others, Mental Health of Refugee and Non-Refugee Migrant Young People in European Secondary Education: The Role of Family Separation, Daily Material Stress and Perceived Discrimination in Resettlement, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 51 (2022), 1–23

While scholarly literature indicates that both refugee and non-refugee migrant young people display increased levels of psychosocial vulnerability, studies comparing the mental health of the two groups remain scarce. This study aims to further the existing evidence by examining refugee and non-refugee migrants’ mental health, in relation to their migration history and resettlement conditions. The mental health of 883 refugee and 483 non-refugee migrants (mean age 15.41, range 11-24, 45.9% girls, average length of stay in the host country 3.75 years) in five European countries was studied in their relation to family separation, daily material stress and perceived discrimination in resettlement. All participants reported high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Family separation predicted post-trauma and internalizing behavioral difficulties only in refugees. Daily material stress related to lower levels of overall well-being in all participants, and higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavioral difficulties in refugees. Perceived discrimination was associated with increased levels of mental health problems for refugees and non-refugee migrants. The relationship between perceived discrimination and post-traumatic stress symptoms in non-refugee migrants, together with the high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms in this subsample, raises important questions on the nature of trauma exposure in non-refugee migrants, as well as the ways in which experiences of discrimination may interact with other traumatic stressors in predicting mental health.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01515-y

PDF: https://europepmc.org/article/med/34686949

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

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

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

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

Sparre, Sara Lei, (In)Visibility and the Muslim Other: Narratives of Flight and Religious Identity among Iraqi Christians in Denmark. (2021)

Sparre, Sara Lei, (In)Visibility and the Muslim Other: Narratives of Flight and Religious Identity among Iraqi Christians in Denmark, Ethnicities, 21.3 (2021), 589–610

This article investigates identity and belonging among Christians of Iraqi origin in Denmark through an analysis of their narratives of flight and interreligious relations, with a particular focus on the underlying dynamics of a widespread anti-Muslim discourse. Based on qualitative interviews and informal conversations with Chaldean and Assyrian Christians from Iraq, I examine how they presented themselves to me through their stories of flight from Iraq and settlement in Denmark. The analysis draws on perspectives on positionality and belonging among migrants as well as the ambiguous concept of (in)visibility, understood both as something structurally enforced and as how individuals and groups experience their (in)visibility and strive towards mobility and recognition. In addition, the analysis incorporates insights and discussions from literature on racialization and minority?majority relations, while particularly focusing on religious identity and Muslim?Christian relations. Against experiences of racialization and misrecognition as Muslims, I explore how they make sense of, articulate and act on their complex social location as invisible Christians and visible Middle Easterners in a Danish context characterized by ambiguous expectations of religiosity and national belonging. I draw attention to three different, yet simultaneous, narratives put forward by the Iraqi Christians: flight from political oppression, flight from Muslim persecution in the Middle East, and Islam as a threat against Europe. I argue that Iraqi Christians interpret and navigate the experience of being bodily invisible as Christians but visible as immigrants and Middle Eastern Muslims by rewriting narratives of their flight from Iraq to Denmark. Consequently, they also rewrite their relations to both the ?Christian other? in Denmark and the ?Muslim other? in Denmark and Iraq. The article contributes with a perspective on ?invisible? and/or misrecognized non-Muslim minorities in Europe and thus offers insights into the diversity within assumedly homogenous ethnic groups.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796820949279

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sahi̇n, Merve, The Development of the Turkish Minority’s Social Challenges in Denmark from 1970 to 2021, for the Purpose of Integration (2022). [PDF]

Sahi̇n, Merve, The Development of the Turkish Minority’s Social Challenges in Denmark from 1970 to 2021, for the Purpose of Integration, Turkish Journal of Diaspora Studies, 2.1 (2022), 55–72.

Beginning in the 1960’s, Denmark recruited Turkish guest workers. Today, the Turkish minority is Denmark’s largest minority group from non-western countries. This article examines the social challenges of the Turkish minority in Denmark from 1970 to 2021, and their integration during this period. This study uses several methods to obtain insight into the integration process of Turkish immigrants over three generations in Denmark and the challenges they faced and continue to face. In addition to the source criticism and a comprehensive literature review, this study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to understand Turkish immigrants’ immigration processes. Qualitative and quantitative analysis in the field of Danish historical research, specifically the area concerning the Turkish minority are not adequately covered by the existing literature. This study finds that all three generations of the Turkish minority in Denmark experienced social challenges in several areas that are related to each other, and these social challenges have an effect on their integration status. Some social challenges have decreased over generations but specifically discrimination and racism have not.

PDF: https://tjds.org.tr/index.php/tjds/article/view/15

Papadakis, Yiannis, Belonging in a Welfare State: Greek and Greek Cypriot Immigrants in Denmark. (2022)

Papadakis, Yiannis, Belonging in a Welfare State: Greek and Greek Cypriot Immigrants in Denmark, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 0.0 (2022), 1–20

A central question in migration studies concerns how communities of belonging can exist beyond communities of identity. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Greek and Greek Cypriot immigrants in Denmark and theoretical discussions on “translocational belongings”, this article suggests that security, equality and a sense of ownership are key factors that contribute towards an enhanced a sense of belonging premised on solidarity, even in the presence of cultural differences related to identity. Migrant belongings, it is further suggested, should not only be treated as plural but also as comparative vis-à-vis the country of origin. The immigrants’ narratives often focussed on comparisons between Denmark with Greece or Cyprus emphasizing how their interactions with the Danish welfare state contributed to a, comparatively-speaking, more profound sense of belonging in Denmark. Yet, the rise of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, along with the persistent challenges to the welfare state, have led to rising feelings of alienation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2022.2085524

Pardue, Derek, Are You in the Club? The Contested Role of the Night for Muslim Immigrant Youth in Aarhus, Denmark. (2022)

Pardue, Derek, Are You in the Club? The Contested Role of the Night for Muslim Immigrant Youth in Aarhus, Denmark, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2022, 1–17

This article investigates spatial belonging and how qualifiers of the night and darkness inform policies and experiences of migrant living in contemporary Denmark. I focus on ‘youth clubs’ (Ungdomsklubber), a network of state and community sponsored buildings located in periphery neighbourhoods within Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. My approach to the youth clubs is in terms of nocturnal geographies, as ‘the night’ is not only a temporal category but also a spatial one. Beyond the specificities of this case study, I argue that migration scholars should give critical attention to nocturnality, within a strategic intersectional approach, as a contested ecology that generates differentiated value. As a time–space, the night helps define the legitimacy of occupations, passages, visibilities and other kinds of presence in the city thereby providing insight into migrant experiences and the problematic nature of immigration and ‘integration’ policies.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2077181

Koefoed, Lasse, Kirsten Simonsen, and Anniken Førde, Everyday Hospitality and Politics. (2021) [PDF]

Koefoed, Lasse, Kirsten Simonsen, and Anniken Førde, Everyday Hospitality and Politics, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 11.4 (2021), 444–58.

The article explores everyday hospitality and politics through inclusive forms of integration initiatives in everyday life and urban communities in Denmark and Norway. It investigates how local initiatives and creative social strategies by local actors can empower and include refugees and immigrants in local communities. This article is based on participant observations of urban communities in Denmark and Norway working to welcome refugees and create new cross-cultural meeting places. We argue that people mobilize and take action when faced with emergency, and that the many welcome initiatives organized around theatre, food, dance and music can rework difference. The cases relate to the discussion of hospitality, the production of meaningful meeting places in a local context and the embodied encounters promoted by these activities. This article discusses everyday hospitality and politics in light of the transition in the Nordic welfare states, which has made the debate around inclusion of refugees and immigrants in local communities and the welfare state centre.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.33134/njmr.387

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breidahl, Karen Nielsen, Troels Fage Hedegaard, Kristian Kongshøj, and Christian Albrekt Larsen. Migrants’ Attitudes and the Welfare State: The Danish Melting Pot. (2021)

Breidahl, Karen Nielsen, Troels Fage Hedegaard, Kristian Kongshøj, and Christian Albrekt Larsen. Migrants’ Attitudes and the Welfare State: The Danish Melting Pot. Northampton: Edward Elgar Pub, 2021,

Analysing two major surveys of 14 different migrant groups connected to Danish register data, this insightful book explores what migrants think of the welfare state. It investigates the question of whether migrants assimilate to the ideas of extensive state intervention in markets and families or if they retain the attitudes and values that are prevalent in their countries of origin.The authors examine what various migrant groups from countries including Poland, Romania, Spain, the UK, China, Japan, Turkey, Russia, the US, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq and the former-Yugoslavia living in Denmark think about the trustworthiness of state institutions, state responsibility, economic redistribution, female employment and childcare. Chapters also cover the key issues of national identification, social trust and welfare nationalism. Concluding that migrants from diverse backgrounds assimilate well into the welfare attitudes, norms and values of the Danish people in several areas, the book points to the potential assimilative impact of the welfare state. Incorporating new theoretical discussions, this book will be critical reading for academics and students studying migration and welfare states. It will also be a useful resource for comparative migration researchers interested in the impact of the host country context on migrants’ assimilation patterns.

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/migrants-attitudes-and-the-welfare-state-9781800376335.html.

Martha S. Karrebæk. ‘Pigs and Pork in Denmark: Meaning Change, Morality and Traditional Foods.’ (2017) [PDF]

Martha S. Karrebæk.. Pigs and Pork in Denmark: Meaning Change, Morality and Traditional Foods. WP230, Literacies, Working Papers in Urban Language. 2017.

This paper engages with meanings of pork and pigs, as they are revealed in Denmark today. The main objective is to discuss the relation between use and understandings as revealed in interaction in different settings, on the one hand, and how such situational uses relate to nation-wide mass-mediated discourses, on the other. The porcine area lends itself to such an analysis, as pork carries a range of important indexicalities in contemporary Denmark. It signifies tradition, industrialization, and an anti-immigration stance. Interactional data come from three field-studies, from a school, a fine-dining restaurant and a fast food restaurant. The media data come from three recent debates on Denmark, Danish values, and immigrants versus Danes.

https://nors.ku.dk/english/staff/?pure=en%2Fpublications%2Fpigs-and-pork-in-denmark-meaning-change-ideology-and-traditional-foods(898a1c38-42a0-4476-9a6c-c840b60ab94b).html.

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/35100320/WP230_Karreb%C3%A6k_2017_Pigs_and_pork_in_Denmark_Meaning_change_morality_and_traditional_foods.

Karrebæk, Martha Sif, Københavns Universitet, and Humanistiske Fakultet. At blive et børnehavebarn: en minoritetsdrengs sprog, interaktion og deltagelse i børnefællesskabet. (2011) [PDF]

Karrebæk, Martha Sif, Københavns Universitet, and Humanistiske Fakultet. At blive et børnehavebarn: en minoritetsdrengs sprog, interaktion og deltagelse i børnefællesskabet. PhD dissertation. Københavns Universitet, Humanistisk Fakultet, 2011.

PDF: https://andetsprogsforskning.ku.dk/forskning/koebenhavnerstudier_i_tosprogethed_/manuskripter/Bind_62_-_Martha_Sif_Karreb_k_-_At_blive_et_b_rnehavebarn.pdf

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Politics Feeds Back: The Minority/Majority Turnout Gap and Citizenship in Anti-Immigrant Times’. (2020)

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘Politics Feeds Back: The Minority/Majority Turnout Gap and Citizenship in Anti-Immigrant Times’. Perspectives on Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 1–16.

Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority population. I argue that existing theories fall short in addressing this gap because they do not attend to the distinctly political forces that shape citizens’ relationships to politics. Building on the policy-feedback literature, and analyzing seventy-one in-depth interviews with minority and majority youths in Denmark, I show that because these groups are targeted very differently in policy and political discourse, they have substantially different conceptions of politics and their status as citizens. Many minority youths react to anti-immigrant political messages by dissociating from politics, but I warn against interpreting their quiescence as political apathy. Instead, dissociating from politics can be a strategy to reclaim power over their self-understanding and can be experienced as empowering. These findings challenge classic conceptualizations of political engagement and open discussion about how to understand political behavior in increasingly diverse societies.

doi:10.1017/S1537592720002431.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/politics-feeds-back-the-minoritymajority-turnout-gap-and-citizenship-in-antiimmigrant-times/A83697CB81927CA41CFA9B86D92B3723.

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘”Hvor dansk skal man være for at være dansk?” Hvordan unge efterkommere af indvandrere fra Mellemøsten oplever mulighederne for at høre til i Danmark’. (2017) [PDF]

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær. ‘”Hvor dansk skal man være for at være dansk?” Hvordan unge efterkommere af indvandrere fra Mellemøsten oplever mulighederne for at høre til i Danmark’. Politica, no. 3, 2017, pp. 312–329.

Forskningen i integration af indvandrere og deres børn interesserer sig typisk for funktionelle og objektive mål, mens der mere sjældent sættes fokus på den identifikationsmæssige integration. På baggrund af dybdegående interviews undersøger jeg, hvordan unge efterkommere af indvandrere fra Mellemøsten opfatter grænsen til det danske, og hvilke konsekvenser dette har for deres følelse af nationalt tilhør. Analysen viser, at der er udbredt konsensus blandt interviewpersonerne om, hvilke markører der ekskluderer en fra det danske. Variationen i graden af nationalt tilhør blandt interviewpersonerne (fra sikker identifikation til dis-identifikation) forklares af, hvordan de opfatter deres egen placering i forhold til grænsen.

PDF: https://politica.dk/fileadmin/politica/Dokumenter/politica_49_3/kristina.pdf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jensen, Kristian Kriegbaum. ‘What Can and Cannot Be Willed: How Politicians Talk about National Identity and Immigrants: What Can and Cannot Be Willed’. (2014) [PDF]

Jensen, Kristian Kriegbaum. ‘What Can and Cannot Be Willed: How Politicians Talk about National Identity and Immigrants: What Can and Cannot Be Willed’. Nations and Nationalism, vol. 20, no. 3, July 2014, pp. 563–583.

The ethnic‐civic framework remains widely used in nationalism research. However, in the context of European immigrant integration politics, where almost all ‘nation talk’ is occurring in civic and liberal registers, the framework has a hard time identifying how conceptions of national identity brought forth in political debate differ in their exclusionary potential. This leads some to the conclusion that national identity is losing explanatory power. Building on the insights of Oliver Zimmer, I argue that we may find a different picture if we treat cultural content and logic of boundary construction – two parameters conflated in the ethnic‐civic framework – as two distinct analytical levels. The framework I propose focuses on an individual and collective dimension of logic of boundary construction that together constitute the inclusionary/exclusionary core of national identity. The framework is tested on the political debate on immigrant integration in Denmark and Norway in selected years. Indeed, the framework enables us to move beyond the widespread idea that Danish politicians subscribe to an ethnic conception of the nation, while Norwegian political thought is somewhere in between an ethnic and civic conception. The true difference is that Danish politicians, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, do not acknowledge the collective self‐understanding as an object of political action.

doi:10.1111/nana.12069.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264773027_What_can_and_cannot_be_willed_How_politicians_talk_about_national_identity_and_immigrants.

Koefoed, Lasse Martin, and Kirsten Simonsen. ‘“I Feel Danish but…”: A Case Study on National Identity Formation and Ambivalence’. (2013) [PDF]

Koefoed, Lasse Martin, and Kirsten Simonsen. ‘“I Feel Danish but…”: A Case Study on National Identity Formation and Ambivalence’. Geographica Helvetica, vol. 68, no. 3, Copernicus GmbH, Nov. 2013, pp. 213–222.

Non-western minorities in Europe, one can argue, are experiencing particularly vulnerable processes of subjectification and identification. They are often caught between double processes of inclusion/exclusion, integration/segregation or identification/estrangement. This article explores some of the complex and ambiguous processes of identification within this group, in connection with development of the spatial identity of Danishness. It starts with a short theoretical pinning down of the figure of “the stranger” working as a basis for the empirical analysis. Organised in three sections, each interpreting a specific narrative of identification, the analysis subsequently explores processes and problems of identity formation within a minority group increasingly designated as “strangers” within the Danish nation state. The article concludes on the different ways in which uncertainty and ambivalence infiltrate the identity formation.

https://gh.copernicus.org/articles/68/213/2013/

PDF: https://rucforsk.ruc.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/53947197/I_feel_danish.pdf.