Keskinen, Suvi, Ov Cristian Norocel, and Martin Bak Jørgensen. ‘The Politics and Policies of Welfare Chauvinism under the Economic Crisis’. (2016) [PDF]

Keskinen, Suvi, Ov Cristian Norocel, and Martin Bak Jørgensen. ‘The Politics and Policies of Welfare Chauvinism under the Economic Crisis’. Critical Social Policy, vol. 36, no. 3, Aug. 2016, pp. 321–329.

The ongoing economic crisis that emerged in the wake of the global recession in 2008, and was followed by the more recent crisis of the Eurozone, has introduced new themes and remoulded old ways of approaching the welfare state, immigration, national belonging and racism in Northern Europe. This article identifies two main ways of understanding welfare chauvinism: 1) as a broad concept that covers all sorts of claims and policies to reserve welfare benefits for the ‘native’ population; 2) an ethno-nationalist and racialising political agenda, characteristic especially of right-wing populist parties. Focusing on the relationship between politics and policies, we examine how welfare chauvinist political agendas are turned into policies and what hinders welfare chauvinist claims from becoming policy matters and welfare practices. It is argued that welfare chauvinism targeting migrants is part of a broader neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state and of welfare retrenchment.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018315624168.

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0261018315624168

Keskinen, Suvi, Mari Toivanen, and Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir. Undoing homogeneity in the Nordic region: migration, difference and the politics of solidarity. (2019) [PDF]

Keskinen, Suvi, Mari Toivanen, and Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir. Undoing homogeneity in the Nordic region: migration, difference and the politics of solidarity. 2019.

This book critically engages with dominant ideas of cultural homogeneity in the Nordic countries and contests the notion of homogeneity as a crucial determinant of social cohesion and societal security. Showing how national identities in the Nordic region have developed historically around notions of cultural and racial homogeneity, it exposes the varied histories of migration and the longstanding presence of ethnic minorities and indigenous people in the region that are ignored in dominant narratives. With attention to the implications of notions of homogeneity for the everyday lives of migrants and racialised minorities in the region, as well as the increasing securitisation of those perceived not to be part of the homogenous nation, this volume provides detailed analyses of how welfare state policies, media, and authorities seek to manage and govern cultural, religious, and racial differences. With studies of national minorities, indigenous people and migrants in the analysis of homogeneity and difference, it sheds light on the agency of minorities and the intertwining of securitisation policies with notions of culture, race, and religion in the government of difference. As such it will appeal to scholars and students in social sciences and humanities with interests in race and ethnicity, migration, postcolonialism, Nordic studies, multiculturalism, citizenship, and belonging.

Table of contents: 1. Narrations of Homogeneity, Waning Welfare States, and the Politics of Solidarity   Part 1: Histories of Homogeneity and Difference  2. Forgetting Diversity? Norwegian Narratives of Ethnic and Cultural Homogeneity  3. Myths of Ethnic Homogeneity: The Danish Case  4. Finnish Media Representations of the Sámi in the 1960s and 1970s  Part 2: Governing and Negotiating Differences  5. Knowledge about Roma and Travellers in Nordic Schools: Paradoxes, Constraints, and Possibilities  6. Problematising the Urban Periphery: Discourses on Social Exclusion and Suburban Youth in Sweden  7. Welfare Chauvinism at the Margins of Whiteness: Young Unemployed Russian-Speakers’ Negotiations of Worker-Citizenship in Finland  8. Starry Starry Night: Fantasies of Homogeneity in Documentary Films about Kvens and Norwegian-Pakistanis  Part 3: Questioned Homogeneity and Securitisation   9. From Welfare to Warfare: Exploring the Militarisation of the Swedish Suburb  10. “Living in fear”—Bulgarian and Romanian Street Workers’ Experiences With Aggressive Public and Private Policing  11. A ‘Muslim’ Response to the Narrative of the Enemy Within  12. Being Unknown: The Securitisation of Asylum Seekers in Iceland

https://www.routledge.com/Undoing-Homogeneity-in-the-Nordic-Region-Migration-Difference-and-the/Keskinen-Skaptadottir-Toivanen/p/book/9780367727789

PDF: https://helda.helsinki.fi//bitstream/handle/10138/316709/Undoing_Homogeneity_in_the_Nordic_Region.pdf?sequence=1.

Lapina, Linda, and Mante Vertelyte. ‘“Eastern European”, Yes, but How? Autoethnographic Accounts of Differentiated Whiteness’. (2020)

Lapiņa, Linda, and Mantė Vertelytė. ‘“Eastern European”, Yes, but How? Autoethnographic Accounts of Differentiated Whiteness’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 3, Routledge, July 2020, pp. 237–250.

This article examines how intersecting markers of difference shape differentiated whiteness. In so doing, it contributes to scholarship on whiteness and racialization. The authors draw on autoethnographic vignettes from fieldwork in Copenhagen to analyse the emergence of similar-yet-divergent researcher and migrant positionalities. Both authors are female researchers from Baltic countries living in Denmark and often perceived as Eastern Europeans—as not-quite-white and as “Europe’s ‘internal others’”. Both of us conducted fieldwork in the same district of Copenhagen. Mantė carried out research on friendships among teenagersn a racially diverse public school and in youth activity clubs. Linda explored social inclusion and exclusion in contested urban spaces. However, our researcher positionalities played out differently. We analyse how ambiguous, contested and relational notions of (Eastern) Europeanness, together with intersecting racialized, classed and gendered tropes of Eastern European migration, made themselves manifest in our positionings and movements. Through an intersectional analysis of Eastern European racialized positionalities, our discussion of differentiated whiteness highlights how whiteness is intersectionally constituted, multiple and mouldable. These findings serve to nuance research on hegemonic whiteness in the Nordic setting.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2020.1762731.

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (2011)

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London ; New York: Zed Books, 2011.

Across the West, something called multiculturalism is in crisis. Regarded as the failed experiment of liberal elites, commentators and politicians compete to denounce its corrosive legacies; parallel communities threatening social cohesion, enemies within cultivated by irresponsible cultural relativism, mediaeval practices subverting national ‘ways of life’ and universal values. This important new book challenges this familiar narrative of the rise and fall of multiculturalism by challenging the existence of a coherent era of ‘multiculturalism’ in the first place. The authors argue that what we are witnessing is not so much a rejection of multiculturalism as a rejection of lived multiculture. In documenting mainstream racism and the anxieties that inform it, Lentin and Titley argue that the crisis is a projection of neoliberal societies’ disjunctures. Combining theory with a reading of contemporary events, it examines the transnational, mediated nature of crisis itself, and argues challenging this notion provides activists with a chance to transcend resurgent racism.

The Crises of Multiculturalism

Morita, Liang. ‘The Emphasis on Ethnic Homogeneity and Japanese and Danish Immigration Policy’. (2019) [PDF]

Morita, Liang. ‘The Emphasis on Ethnic Homogeneity and Japanese and Danish Immigration Policy’. World Journal of Social Science, vol. 6, no. 2, July 2019, p. 16.

This essay compares the Japanese emphasis on ethnic homogeneity in immigration policy with its counterpart in Denmark. Japan’s lack of integration policy stands out against the backdrop of Denmark’s elaborate civic integration policy. A key reason for this contrast is the criterion that Japan is for the Japanese, and one has to be ethnically and culturally Japanese to be Japanese. Nihonjinron, a discourse on Japanese cultural uniqueness, has provided ammunition for this. Denmark, on the other hand, is in principle open to those who adopt Danish values. Japan needs a strong integration policy as the number of immigrants increase. Until now, its emphasis on ethnic homogeneity has led Japan to see immigrants as outsiders and to exclude them. Denmark, on the other hand, is willing to include immigrants on equal terms, on the condition that they adopt Danish values.

doi:10.5430/wjss.v6n2p16.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liang_Morita/publication/334250823_The_Emphasis_on_Ethnic_Homogeneity_and_Japanese_and_Danish_Immigration_Policy/links/5d1f12c3299bf1547c98d39e/The-Emphasis-on-Ethnic-Homogeneity-and-Japanese-and-Danish-Immigration-Policy.pdf.

Mouritsen, Per, and Tore Vincents Olsen. ‘Denmark between Liberalism and Nationalism’. (2013) [PDF]

Mouritsen, Per, and Tore Vincents Olsen. ‘Denmark between Liberalism and Nationalism’. Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 36, no. 4, Apr. 2013, pp. 691–710.

What explains the restrictive turn towards immigrants in European countries like Denmark? Are countries returning to nationalism, or are they following a general European trend towards a perfectionist, even ‘repressive’ liberalism that seeks to create ‘liberal people’ out of immigrants? Recent developments in Danish policies of integration and citizenship, education and anti-discrimination suggest a combination of these two diagnoses. The current Danish ‘integration philosophy’ leaves behind a previous concern with private choice and equal rights and opportunities to emphasize other historical elements, especially the duty to participate in upholding democracy and the egalitarian welfare community, and to promote autonomous and secular ways of life. However, the virtues of this ‘egalitarian republicanism’ are seen by right-of-centre intellectuals and politicians as rooted in a wider Christian national culture that immigrants must acquire in order to become full citizens.

doi:10.1080/01419870.2011.598233.

PDF: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00726660/file/PEER_stage2_10.1080%252F01419870.2011.598233.pdf

Myong, Lene, and Mons Bissenbakker. ‘Love Without Borders? White Transraciality in Danish Migration Activism’. (2016)

Myong, Lene, and Mons Bissenbakker. ‘Love Without Borders? White Transraciality in Danish Migration Activism’. Cultural Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 129–146.

Since 2000, Denmark has imposed some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe. Consequently, family reunification has become increasingly difficult for immigrants as well as for Danish citizens. In the fall of 2010, the Danish family reunification laws became subject to criticism and protest by a citizens’ initiative called ‘Love without Borders’ (LWB). The article investigates how LWB managed to generate political momentum around love: an affect which seems to promise inclusion, liberation and togetherness for those directly affected by the laws as well as those attempting to change the laws. Yet the idealized version of love promoted by LWB happened to take the form of romantic intimacy predominantly consisting of straight, young and white-brown couples oriented towards reproduction. Our main argument is that despite its good intentions of supporting migration the activist campaign ‘Love without Borders’ ends up supporting whiteness as the body through which love must flow. As an indicator of the racialized discourses informing LWB’s activism the article introduces the concept of white transraciality. Thus, to LWB love seems to promise affective ties to the nation, to the future and to the political system in ways that sustain white hegemony. Building mainly on Sara Ahmed’s and Laurent Berlant’s reflections on love as cultural politics the article analyzes posters, viral videos and newspaper debates in its discussion of the promises and pitfalls of love as an affective political tool.

doi:10.1080/09502386.2014.974643.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.974643.

Jane Jin Kaisen, ed. Loving Belinda, (2015) [PDF]

Jane Jin Kaisen, ed. Loving Belinda, Forlaget * [asterisk], 2015.

The Loving Belinda project began in 2006 with the video Adopting Belinda in which Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, a supposedly Asian-American couple in Minnesota, are being interviewed by a Danish TV host for a series on Danish heritage because they have just adopted Belinda, a white girl from Denmark. Everything appears ordinary with the exception that the racial and cultural dynamics are reversed.

The Loving Belinda Project employs the mockumentary genre, appropriating documentary features to destabilize reality with subversive effect. By staging and reversing the racial “order” within transnational adoption, the works expose some of the uneven economic, racial, and cultural relations of power that are embedded within the practice but that tend to remain unspoken.

The videos Revisiting the Andersons and Loving Belinda as well as the photograph The Andersons from 2015,portray how the family is coping now whenBelinda is nine years old in the midst of changing discourses around transnational adoption.

In the Loving Belinda publication, the fictional universe is contextualized by conversations between the individuals involved in the project, whom in reality are all engaged in critical discourse around transnational adoption, anti-racism and whiteness in Scandinavia. 

Contents:

LOVING BELINDA

Adopting Belinda

Revisiting the Andersons

Loving Belinda

The Andersons

CONVERSATIONS

Tobias Hübinette & Jane Jin Kaisen: Transnational Adoption in the Context of Colonial Repression, Race Relations, and the Right-wing Turn in Scandinavia,

Morten Goll & Jane Jin Kaisen: Reflections on Art, Asylum Politics, Racism, and Transnational Adoption

Lene Myong & Jane Jin Kaisen: The Emergence of Adoption Critiques among Transnational Adoptees in Denmark

ESSAYS / PRESENTATIONS

Marianne Ping Huang: Artistic Research as Critique in Jane Jin Kaisen’s Loving Belinda

Louise Wolthers: Framing the Migrant Body

Tone Olaf Nielsen: Curating Anti-Racist, Pro-Migration & Decolonial Projects

http://janejinkaisen.com/loving-belinda-200615

PDF: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5539922fe4b03e1f32a65bc3/t/557bf05ee4b00283cf1e1590/1434185822742/Loving+Belinda+publication.pdf

Necef, Mehmet Ümit, and Torben Bech Dyrberg. Er Danskerne Racister? Indvandrerforskningens Problemer. (2012)

Necef, Mehmet Ümit, and Torben Bech Dyrberg. Er Danskerne Racister? Indvandrerforskningens Problemer. Frydenlund Academic, 2012.

Hvor racistiske er danskerne ved nærmere eftersyn? Bogens forfattere har undersøgt sagen og kigget os efter i sømmene.  Over en 20-årig periode har bogens to forskere undersøgt racisme i Danmark, og ikke bare deres konklusion, men også selve undersøgelsen, vækker opsigt.  Noget kunne nemlig tyde på, vi ikke er helt så fremmedfjendske, som mange går og tror. Både den offentlige debat og den videnskabelige forskning har imidlertid været med til at underbygge tesen om, at danskerne er racister, så indtrykket af det lille lukkede folk mod nord er ikke kommet ud af det blå.  Denne bog slår ikke desto mindre fast, at der er meget lidt dokumentation for udbredt dansk racisme, fremmedhad, islamofobi og lignende. Forskerne understreger, at dette ikke betyder, at der slet ikke findes racisme i Danmark, men de pointerer samtidig, at det er i langt mindre og andet omfang, end hidtil antaget.  Bogen åbner op for en seriøs debat om det komplicerede emne med saglig viden og grundig indsigt.

https://www.frydenlund.dk/varebeskrivelse/3090

Necef, Mehmet Ümit, and Torben Bech Dyrberg. Multikulturalismens fælder: Mørklægning og moralisme i medier, forskning og politik. (2016)

Necef, Mehmet Ümit, and Torben Bech Dyrberg. Multikulturalismens fælder: Mørklægning og moralisme i medier, forskning og politik. Samfundslitteratur, 2016.

Opgør med en multikulturalistisk debatkultur, hvor politisk korrekthed og moralisering fortrænger politisk uenighed, og hvor bortforklaring af problemer står i vejen for skabelsen af rammer for, hvordan folk med forskellige og konfliktende værdier kan leve sammen.

Indhold:

Indledning

Kritiske fortolkninger af multikulturalisme og antiracisme  9

TORBEN BECH DYRBERG OG MEHMET ÜMIT NECEF

FØRSTE DEL KULTURRELATIVISME OG MULTIKULTURALISME SOM VENSTREFLØJSFANTASIER OG FORSKERIDEOLOGIER  37

Kapitel 1: Svensk mångfaldspolitik et studie i opportunisme 39

GÖRAN ADAMSON

Kapitel 2: Asymmetrisk kulturrelativisme om antropologiens kritiske potentiale 63

KATJA KVAALE

Kapitel 3: Indvandrerne, indvandrervennerne og det nye politiske venstre 89

TORBEN RUGBERG RASMUSSEN

ANDEN DEL ANTIRACISME SOM STIGMATISERING OG MORALISERINGENAF DEN POLITISKE DEBAT 111

Kapitel 4: Islamofobiske problemer om hvordan diskursen om islamofobi ekskluderer muslimer fra det demokratiske fællesskab 113

AJE CARLBOM

Kapitel 5: Er indvandrere racister? 131

JENS-MARTIN ERIKSEN

Kapitel 6: Tolerance og tonerance truslen mod det oplyste tolerancebegreb 147

FREDERIK STJERNFELT

Kapitel 7: Venstrefløjens selektive og moraliserende tolerance 165

TORBEN BECH DYRBERG

TREDJE DEL FORDOMME OG FJENDEBILLEDER SOM MODSTYKKE TIL DIALOG 187

Kapitel 8: Styres forskningen af frygten for at blive kaldt racist? praksisnære overvejelser 189

HENRIETTE FREES ESHOLDT

Kapitel 9: Gode intentioner? om politisk korrekthed, magt og social udsathed blandt de Andre 207

PERNILLA OUIS

Kapitel 10: Er danske værdier bedre end muslimske indvandreres ? et første forsøg 227

HENNING BECH

FJERDE DEL KULTUR SOM AUTENTICITET ELLER TILSLØRING 243

Kapitel 11: Æresrelateret vold som kulturaliserende diskurs? kritik af en udbredt forskningstilgang 245

YVONNE MØRCK, SOFIE DANNESKIOLD-SAMSØE OG BO WAGNER SØRENSEN

Kapitel 12: Eventyret om Vollsmose og den multikulturelle illusion 273

HELLE LYKKE NIELSEN

Kapitel 13: Yahya Hassans brøde 299

MEHMET ÜMIT NECEF

https://samfundslitteratur.dk/bog/multikulturalismens-f%C3%A6lder

Pedersen, Marianne Holm, and Mikkel Rytter. ‘Rituals of Migration: An Introduction’. (2018) [PDF]

Pedersen, Marianne Holm, and Mikkel Rytter. ‘Rituals of Migration: An Introduction’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 44, no. 16, Dec. 2018, pp. 2603–2616.

This introduction presents a framework for the articles in the special issue Rituals of Migration. First, it provides an overview of studies of ritual and migration, highlighting the fruitfulness of exploring the two fields together and arguing for the use of ritual as a cultural prism on processes of continuity and change in migration. In light of these analytical approaches, the introduction continues by outlining and discussing the three major themes that crosscut the articles (the interrelations between change and continuity, processes of placemaking and lines of social differentiation), demonstrating how the articles can shed light on these issues.

doi:10.1080/1369183X.2017.1389024.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1389024.

Plambech, Sine. ‘’Postordrebrude’’ i Nordvestjylland: Transnationale Ægteskaber i Et omsorgsøkonomisk Perspektiv’ (2005) [PDF]

Plambech, Sine. ‘’Postordrebrude’’ i Nordvestjylland: Transnationale Ægteskaber i Et omsorgsøkonomisk Perspektiv’. Dansk Sociologi, vol. 16, no. 1, 2005, pp. 91–110,

Søg på Internettet under mail order brides, og 1.100.000 hitshenviser til kvinder, der søger en ægtemand i Vesten – pådansk omtales de som ’’postordrebrude’’. Denne artikel handlerom ægteskaber mellem thailandske kvinder og danske mænd.Deres transnationale ægteskaber giver et indblik i motiverne formigration hos en gruppe af verdens kvindelige migranter;kvinder, der krydser grænser for at indgå ægteskab.

PDF: https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/dansksociologi/article/download/555/587.

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘Law and Identity: Transnational Arranged Marriages and the Boundaries of Danishness’. (2011)

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘Law and Identity: Transnational Arranged Marriages and the Boundaries of Danishness’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, Routledge, Feb. 2011, pp. 257–275.

In Denmark, the practice of transnational arranged marriages among immigrants has stirred debate on several levels of society. One effect of the debate is a tightened regulation of family formation migration, seen as an effective means both of limiting the number of immigrants and of furthering processes of social integration. Within media-based and political debates, transnational marriages are frequently described as practices destructive both to individual freedom and to Danish national identity. Nonetheless, it is a practice in which both minority and majority citizens engage, one that frames both their family lives and their lives as citizens. This article analyses the dynamic relationship between public discourse and practices of transnational marriage. The first part describes how political and legislative perceptions of transnational (arranged) marriages are situated within a discussion of ‘Danishness’. The second part describes how second-generation immigrants from Turkey and Pakistan, all of whom have married someone from their country of origin, articulate how public discourse on transnationally arranged marriages affects their lives. This part particularly focuses on the informants’ expressions of autonomy and choice and their adaptations of such concepts to understandings of social belonging, inclusion and identity formation vis-à-vis the Danish nation-state.

doi:10.1080/1369183X.2011.521339.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2011.521339.

Sauer, Birgit, and Birte Siim. ‘Inclusive Political Intersections of Migration, Race, Gender and Sexuality – The Cases of Austria and Denmark’. (2020) [PDF]

Sauer, Birgit, and Birte Siim. ‘Inclusive Political Intersections of Migration, Race, Gender and Sexuality – The Cases of Austria and Denmark’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 1, Routledge, Jan. 2020, pp. 56–69.

The article aims to integrate key concepts from social movement, citizenship and gender theories with afocus on (political) intersectionality at the interface of migration, race, gender and sexuality. It explores the responses from civil society groups to the exclusive intersections of right-wing politics and discourses in Austria and Denmark with afocus on inclusive intersectionality and transversal politics. The article asks if and how the intersectional repertoires of NGOs were able to create transversal politics and joint activities and explains why these NGOs were unable to counter right-wing hegemony. It uses the cases of Austria and Denmark to illustrate the diverse mobilizations of counter-forces against the attempts to forge an anti-migration and anti-Muslim consensus. The focus is on the mobilization of anti-racist and pro-migrant groups, comparing their strategies and inclusionary repertoires including feminist claims, the framing of activist citizenship, acts of citizenship and of solidarity. The article scrutinizes strategies of transversal politics against the exclusionary right in the two countries; shows the influence of the different contexts of civil society mobilization, political cultures, welfare and gender regimes as well as the differences between right-wing forces in the two countries.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2019.1681510.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08038740.2019.1681510?needAccess=true

Schmidt, Garbi. Nørrebros indvandringshistorie 1885-2010. (2015)

Schmidt, Garbi. Nørrebros indvandringshistorie 1885-2010. MuseumTuscelanum, 2015.

Etnisk mangfoldighed er i dag en tydelig dimension af Nørrebro, men er indvandring til kvarteret et nyt fænomen, eller har indvandring fra tidligt i historien bidraget til Nørrebros liv, udvikling og fortælling?

Denne bog beskriver Nørrebros indvandringshistorie, fra svenske tjenestepiger og russisk-jødiske flygtninge over tyske krigsflygtninge og tyrkiske og pakistanske gæstearbejdere til nutiden, hvor Nørrebro både fejres og fordømmes som Københavns indvandrerkvarter. Hvilke roller har indvandrere spillet i kvarteret igennem tiden? Hvem var de, både som grupper og individer? Hvordan spillede indvandring sammen med den fortælling om Nørrebro, som er blevet udviklet og genskabt over tid: byens urolige hjørne, præget af arbejderklasse, fattigdom og aktivisme? I hvilke perioder har indvandrerne været synlige, og i hvilke perioder er de knapt blevet bemærket – selvom de har været der? Og hvordan har sådanne forandringer spillet sammen med byens rum, bystyrets politik og den danske nationalstats håndtering af indvandring over tid?

Nørrebros indvandringshistorie 1885–2010 er en bog om, hvordan indvandring har formet et kvarter, en by – og et land.

https://www.academicbooks.dk/da/content/n%C3%B8rrebros-indvandringshistorie-1885-2010

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘Space, Politics and Past–Present Diversities in a Copenhagen Neighbourhood’. (2016)

Schmidt, Garbi. ‘Space, Politics and Past–Present Diversities in a Copenhagen Neighbourhood’. Identities, vol. 23, no. 1, Routledge, Jan. 2016, pp. 51–65.

This article responds to the need for a cautious use of the concepts of diversity and social cohesion in migration research. Presently missing in the literature is a historicisation and contextualisation of these concepts that can highlight the heterogeneity of diversity. In our investigation of the cities and neighbourhoods in which migrants settle and how migrants affect these neighbourhoods, it is important to ask whether the diversity of today is significantly different from the diversity a hundred years ago. To provide the missing perspectives, I offer a situated historical analysis of empirical data and ethnographic fieldwork in Nørrebro, a neighbourhood of the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Situating the contemporary heterogeneous characteristics of cities and neighbourhoods within a local history of diversity is useful for our understanding of past and contemporary social solidarities that underlie the perceptions of ‘otherness’ and the changing implications of the focus on immigrant identity.

doi:10.1080/1070289X.2015.1016521.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2015.1016521.

Shield, Andrew. ‘“A Southern Man Can Have a Harem of up to Twenty Danish Women”: Sexotic Politics and Immigration in Denmark, 1965–1979’. (2018)

Shield, Andrew. ‘“A Southern Man Can Have a Harem of up to Twenty Danish Women”: Sexotic Politics and Immigration in Denmark, 1965–1979’. Sexualities, vol. 23, Nov. 2018,

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Denmark received about 15,000 foreign workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, the Middle East and North Africa during a unique period of women’s and sexual liberation. As foreign men visited discos—sometimes in search of sexual relationships with Danish women—a segment of Danish men accused foreigners of taking not only ‘their’ jobs but also ‘their’ women, and depicted foreign men as hypersexual or sexually violent (e.g. in union newspapers, men’s magazines). These ‘sexotic’ depictions of foreign men had immediate and negative effects on immigrants’ lived experiences in Denmark. In gay male subcultures, ‘sexotic’ depictions of men of color served mainly to entertain white fantasies, which also affected the experiences especially of gay men of color in Denmark. Overall, sexualized stereotypes about the male Other were central to broader political discussions in Denmark in the long 1970s, including debates about Danish wage suppression, immigrant ghetto formation, and the definition of sexual liberation.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460718758665

Shield, Andrew DJ. Gay Immigrants and Grindr: Revitalizing Queer Urban Spaces? (2018). [PDF]

Shield, Andrew DJ. Gay Immigrants and Grindr: Revitalizing Queer Urban Spaces? 2018.

In this (open-access) essay, I assess the idea that Grindr and related apps render urban gay spaces obsolete, and offer three counter-arguments based on my research with immigrants and tourists who use Grindr. In short: newcomers who use Grindr might actually bring new life to queer urban spaces, because… 1. Newcomers don’t use Grindr in the same way they use (physical) queer spaces; 2. Newcomers use Grindr *in* queer spaces; and 3. Newcomers often have better luck finding sex offline.

Gay Immigrants and Grindr: Revitalizing Queer Urban Spaces?

PDF: https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/publications/gay-immigrants-and-grindr-revitalizing-queer-urban-spaces.

Shield, Andrew DJ. Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution: Perceptions, Participation, and Belonging, The Netherlands and Denmark, 1960s-80s. (2016) [PDF]

Shield, Andrew DJ. Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution: Perceptions, Participation, and Belonging, The Netherlands and Denmark, 1960s-80s. PhD Dissertation. City University of New York, 2016.

This is an historical study of first-generation immigrants in Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1960s-80s and their perceptions of the ‘Sexual Revolution.’ Foreign workers and post-colonial immigrants arrived during the same decades when laws regarding women’s equality, contraception and abortion, homosexuality, pornography, adultery and divorce were challenged and reformed, in many cases in the context of intensive social movement activism. This research explores immigrants’ perceptions of the dramatic changes in sexual and gender relations transforming Europe in the 1960s-80s, and the instances of immigrant solidarity with, and participation in, networks for social justice, women’s equality, and sexual liberation. Part I of this dissertation focuses on foreign workers’ early impressions of gender equality and sexual liberality from 1965-1974. Part II centers on immigrant activism from 1975-1985; during this time, left-wing immigrant groups in the Netherlands gained strategic and rhetorical inspiration not only from anti-fascism, but also from the women’s movement. Immigrant women ’both actively, and just by being present’ challenged European feminists to consider seriously the roles of ethnicity, race, and cultural difference in the women’s movement. Part III focuses on immigrants and ethnic minorities in gay and lesbian ‘scenes’ (e.g. bars, social circles) and formal organizations in the 1960s-80s. During these decades, contact advertisements in gay and lesbian journals facilitated new friendships, romances, housing connections, employment, and travel opportunities across both internal and external borders (e.g. inter-ethnic and international correspondence). Interviewees recount their experiences ‘coming out,’ moving to cities, and being ‘one of the first’ people of color in various gay and lesbian networks in these decades. By bringing together two seemingly disparate research fields’ immigration history and sexuality history’ this research complicates current political and journalistic discussions of the supposed binary between an Enlightened Europe, always tolerant of women’s independence and gay rights, and its international immigrants, ‘unable’ to change their views on gender and sexuality.

https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/publications/immigrants-in-the-sexual-revolution-perceptions-participation-and. https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/publications/immigrants-in-the-sexual-revolution-perceptions-participation-and.

PDF: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1216/

Suárez-Krabbe, Julia, and Annika Lindberg. ‘Enforcing Apartheid?: The Politics of “Intolerability” in the Danish Migration and Integration Regimes’. (2019)

Suárez-Krabbe, Julia, and Annika Lindberg. ‘Enforcing Apartheid?: The Politics of “Intolerability” in the Danish Migration and Integration Regimes’. Migration and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, Berghahn Journals, June 2019, pp. 90–97.

Across Northern European states, we can observe a proliferation of “hostile environments” targeting racialized groups. This article zooms in on Denmark and discusses recent policy initiatives that are explicitly aimed at excluding, criminalizing, and inflicting harm on migrants and internal “others” by making their lives “intolerable.” We use the example of Danish deportation centers to illustrate how structural racism is institutionalized and implemented, and then discuss the centers in relation to other recent policy initiatives targeting racialized groups. We propose that these policies must be analyzed as complementary bordering practices: externally, as exemplified by deportation centers, and internally, as reflected in the development of parallel legal regimes for racialized groups. We argue that, taken together, they enact and sustain a system of apartheid.

doi:10.3167/arms.2019.020109.

https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/migration-and-society/2/1/arms020109.xml.

Olwig, Kenneth R. ‘Natives and Aliens in the National Landscape’. (2003)

Olwig, Kenneth R. ‘Natives and Aliens in the National Landscape’. Landscape Research, vol. 28, no. 1, Routledge, Jan. 2003, pp. 61–74. Taylor and Francis+NEJM,

Discourses concerning the threat of alien species to national landscapes have a curious tendency to bleed into discourses concerning the threat of alien races and cultures to the native people and culture of these same nations. An explanation for these parallels, it is argued, lies in a common point of departure in a particular post-Renaissance concept of landscape, space and nature, which ultimately derives from what is here termed ‘the cartographic-pictographic episteme’. The epistemic history of these ideas is traced in a series of steps, beginning with a concrete case from Denmark and going on to show how this case relates to larger European discourses dating back to the Renaissance.

doi:10.1080/01426390306525.

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘How the Workers Became Muslims: Immigration, Culture, and Hegemonic Transformation in Europe.’ (2016)

Yilmaz, Ferruh. How the Workers Became Muslims: Immigration, Culture, and Hegemonic Transformation in Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.

Writing in the beginning of the 1980s, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe explored possibilities for a new socialist strategy to capitalize on the period’s fragmented political and social conditions. Two and a half decades later, Ferruh Yilmaz acknowledges that the populist far right—not the socialist movement—has demonstrated greater facility in adopting successful hegemonic strategies along the structural lines Laclau and Mouffe imagined. Right wing hegemonic strategy, Yilmaz argues, has led to the reconfiguration of internal fault lines in European societies.


Yilmaz’s primary case study is Danish immigration discourse, but his argument contextualizes his study in terms of questions of current concern across Europe, where right wing groups that were long on the fringes of “legitimate” politics have managed to make significant gains with populations typically aligned with the Left. Specifically, Yilmaz argues that socio-political space has been transformed in the last three decades such that group classification has been destabilized to emphasize cultural rather than economic attributes.


According to this point-of-view, traditional European social and political cleavages are jettisoned for new “cultural” alliances pulling the political spectrum to the right, against the corrosive presence of Muslim immigrants, whose own social and political variety is flattened into an illusion of alien sameness.

https://www.press.umich.edu/8857103/how_the_workers_became_muslims

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. (2012)

Yilmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. Current Sociology, vol. 60, no. 3, May 2012, pp. 368–381.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants has moved into the center of European political discourse. The increasing volume of publications about the role of Islam in social, cultural and political spheres indicates that Islam is now a major political issue, often associated with the debate on terrorism and security. This article argues that the shift in focus should be understood as the result of a hegemonic shift that goes back to the mid-1980s when the populist farright intervened in the immigration debate in Europe. The far-right not only presented immigration as a cultural threat to the future of European nations but also succeeded in moving immigration to the center of political discourse. This was done through successive right-wing political interventions that helped establish Muslim immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture, and kept the national focus on immigration as an imminent threat to ‘our common’ achievements.

doi:10.1177/0011392111426192.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0011392111426192

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Analyzing Variations and Stability in Discourse’. (2015) [PDF]

Yilmaz, Ferruh. ‘Analyzing Variations and Stability in Discourse’. Journal of Language & Politics, vol. 14, no. 6, 2015, pp. 830–851,

This article offers a theoretical solution to the problem of analyzing stable constructions of social structures in discourse. In this article, I first discuss epistemological and methodological issues with Critical Discourse Analysis and Discursive Psychology and combine insights from these two approaches with insight from Discourse Theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe (2001). Despite the fact that language use is full of inconsistencies and contradictions and thus does not provide an inventory of stable ideological patterns, it is possible to analyze stable constructions of the social world without assuming the existence of macro-structures (i.e. ideologies or mental representations) as stabilizing background for discursive practices. I demonstrate that stability is not so much a function of ideologies or representations but depends on how the ontological structure of society is imagined. The new hegemonic articulation of the social division along cultural lines limits the positions that can be taken in relation to identity categories regardless of the values one attributes to the categories.

https://benjamins.com/catalog/jlp.14.6.05yil

PDF: https://www.academia.edu/download/48186604/Analyzing_Variations_and_Stability_in_Discourse_-_last_draft_Academia.edu.pdf.