Tag: whiteness

Ivenäs, Sabina. ‘White Like Me: Whiteness in Scandinavian Transnational Adoption Literature’. (2017) [PDF]

~ mortenstinus

Ivenäs, Sabina. ‘White Like Me: Whiteness in Scandinavian Transnational Adoption Literature’. Scandinavian Studies, vol. 89, no. 2, [Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press], 2017, pp. 240–265.

From introduction:  This paper problematizes the concept of whiteness by applying it in the context of the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptee. What is unique about the Scandinavian transracial adoptee is that theyalmost exclusively grow up and live in white segregated middle- class environments  (Hübinette  2007).  Nevertheless,  Scandinavian  trans-racial  adoptees  blend  in  seamlessly  with  white  Scandinavian  society  in  terms  of  language,  culture,  and  behavior.  at  the  same  time,  in  contrast to transracial adoptees in more diverse countries such as the such as the United  States,  Canada,  France,  Australia,  and  the  Netherlands,  the  Scandinavian transracial adoptee non-white body becomes extremely concrete (Hübinette 2007, 117). In this paper, which conducts a critical reading of Scandinavian transnational adoption autofiction, I consider how Scandinavian transracial adoptees negotiate the fact that they, as non-white  individuals  are  raised  in,  and  thereby  indoctrinated  into,  the whiteness norm. In line with Dyer’s perspective on how whiteness is studied within white Western culture, this paper sets out to explore how self-representation of whiteness is depicted in Scandinavian trans-national adoptee autofiction. How do the Scandinavian transnational/transracial adoptees represent themselves as white in literary texts?

doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.

PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0240.

McEachrane, Michael, editor. Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe. (2014)

~ mortenstinus

McEachrane, Michael, editor. Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogenously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics?  This text is a must read for anyone interested in issues of race in the Nordic region and Europe writ large. As Paul Gilroy writes in his foreword, it is a book that ‘should be studied with care and profit inside the Nordic countries and also outside them by the broader international readership that has been established around the study of racism and “critical race theory”.’ 

Contents

Foreword—Paul Gilroy.  A

Introduction —Michael McEachrane 

Part I: The Nation 

1. Imagining Blackness at the Margins: Race and Difference in Iceland —Kristín Loftsdóttir 

2. ‘Struggling to Be Recognized as Belonging to the Fauna of Norway’: On Being Black Norwegian Women—Madeleine Kennedy-Macfoy 

3. The Midnight Sun Never Sets: An Email Conversation About Jazz, Race and National Identity in Denmark, Norway and Sweden—Cecil Brown, Anne Dvinge, Petter Frost Fadnes, Johan Fornäs, Ole Izard Høyer, Marilyn Mazur, Michael McEachrane and John Tchicai 

Part II: Racism 

4. There’s a White Elephant in the Room: Equality and Race in (Northern) Europe—Michael McEachrane 

5. Racism Is No Joke: A Swedish Minister and a Hottentot Venus Cake—An Email Conversation—Beth Maina Ahlberg, Claudette Carr, Madubuko Diakité, Fatima El-Tayeb, Tobias Hübinette, Momodou Jallow, Victoria Kawesa, Michael McEachrane, Utz McKnight, Anders Neergaard, Shailja Patel, Kitimbwa Sabuni and Minna Salami 

6. Being and Becoming Mixed Race, Black, Swedish and a Nomadic Subject—Anna Adeniji 

7. Bertrand Besigye’s Civilization Critique: An Aesthetics of Blackness in Norway—Helena Karlsson 

8. Two Poems by Bertrand Besigye: (i) How A Black African Orders Black Coffee (To Barack Hussein Obama); (ii) You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down. Or Black Hail Over All of West Side (Translated by John Irons)—Bertrand Besigye 

Part III: Diaspora 

9. Talking Back: Voices from the African Diaspora in Finland—Anna Rastas 

10. Den Sorte: Nella Larsen and Denmark—Martyn Bone 

11. A Horn of Africa in Northern Europe—An Email Conversation—Abdalla Duh, Mohamed Husein Gaas, Abdalla Gasimelseed, Amel Gorani, Nauja Kleist, Anne Kubai, Michael McEachrane, Saifalyazal Omar, Tsegaye Tegenu and Marja Tiilikain.

https://www.routledge.com/Afro-Nordic-Landscapes-Equality-and-Race-in-Northern-Europe/McEachrane/p/book/9781138207110

Keskinen, Suvi, Salla Tuori, Sara Irni, and Diana Mulinari, editors. Complying With Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region. (2009)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Keskinen, Suvi, Salla Tuori, Sara Irni, and Diana Mulinari, editors. Complying With Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region. 1st edition, Farnham, England ; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2009

Complying with Colonialism presents a complex analysis of the habitual weak regard attributed to the colonial ties of Nordic Countries. It introduces the concept of ’colonial complicity’ to explain the diversity through which northern European countries continue to take part in (post)colonial processes. The volume combines a new perspective on the analysis of Europe and colonialism, whilst offering new insights for feminist and postcolonial studies by examining how gender equality is linked to ’European values’, thus often European superiority. With an international team of experts ranging from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume will appeal not only to academics and scholars within postcolonial sociology, social theory, cultural studies, ethnicity, gender and feminist thought, but also cultural geographers, and those working in the fields of welfare, politics and International Relations. Policy makers and governmental researchers will also find this to be an invaluable source. 

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Postcolonialism and the Nordic Models of Welfare and Gender Diana Mulinari, Sari Irni, Suvi Keskinen and Salla Tuori

PART I: Postcolonial Histories/Postcolonial Presents

CHAPTER 2 Colonial Complicity: The ‘Postcolonial’ in a Nordic Context Ulla Vuorela

CHAPTER 3 The Nordic Colonial Mind Mai Palmberg

CHAPTER 4 The Flipside of My Passport: Myths of Origin and Genealogy of White Supremacy in the Mediated Social Genetic Imaginary Bolette Blaagaard

CHAPTER 5 The Promise of the ‘Nordic’ and Its Reality in the South: The Experiences of Mexican Workers as Members of the ‘Volvo Family’ Diana Mulinari and Nora Räthzel

CHAPTER 6 Stranger or Family Member? Reproducing Postcolonial Power Relations Johanna Latvala

CHAPTER 7 Historical Legacies and Neo-colonial Forms of Power? A Postcolonial Reading of the Bosnian Diaspora Laura Huttunen 

PART II: Welfare State and Its ‘Others’

CHAPTER 8 When Racism Becomes Individualised: Experiences of Racialisation among Adult Adoptees and Adoptive Parents of Sweden Tobias Hübinette and Carina Tigervall

CHAPTER 9 Contradicting the ‘Prostitution Stigma’: Narratives of Russian Migrant Women Living in Norway Jana Sverdljuk

CHAPTER 10 Postcolonial and Queer Readings of ‘Migrant Families’ in the Context of Multicultural Work Salla Tuori

CHAPTER 11 “Experience is a National Asset”: A Postcolonial Reading of Ageing in the Labour Market Sari Irni

CHAPTER 12 Licorice Boys and Female Coffee Beans: Representations of Colonial Complicity in Finnish Visual Culture Leena-Maija Rossi

PART III: Doing Nation and Gender: The Civilising Mission “at Home”

CHAPTER 13 Guiding Migrants to the Realm of Gender Equality Jaana Vuori

CHAPTER 14 Institutional Nationalism and Orientalised Others in Parental Education Nanna Brink Larsen CHAPTER 15 Whose Feminism? Whose Emancipation? Chialing Yang

CHAPTER 16 “Honour”-Related Violence and Nordic Nation-Building  Suvi Keskinen.

https://www.routledge.com/Complying-With-Colonialism-Gender-Race-and-Ethnicity-in-the-Nordic-Region/Keskinen-Tuori-Irni-Mulinari/p/book/9780367603236.

Li, Jin Hui, Louise Yung Nielsen, Marlene Spanger, and Lene Myong. ‘De andre tegn på kroppen’. (2019) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Li, Jin Hui, Louise Yung Nielsen, Marlene Spanger, and Lene Myong. ‘De andre tegn på kroppen’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, vol. 28, no. 1–2, Foreningen for Kønsforskning, Oct. 2019, pp. 99–108.

Dette essay udspringer af vores erfaringer med at blive forvekslet med hinanden i konteksten af dansk akademia. At blive forvekslet er selvfølgelig ikke en erfaring, der er forbeholdt østasiatiske kroppe som vores. Vores afsæt er den racialiserende forveksling, som produceres gennem et hvidt akademisk blik, der både udvisker forskellighed og bestemmer hvilke former for forskellighed, der skal tillægges vægt og betydning. Vi anvender dermed forvekslingerne som en indgang til at reflektere over, hvordan race og hvidhed fungerer som organiserende principper i akademia, og på hvilke måder forskellige former for racialiseringsprocesser gør sig gældende i vores arbejdsliv.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116120.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116120

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. (2019)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 1–2, 1–2, July 2019, pp. 44–57.

The elephant in the room. Racial disappearance acts, mood politics and idiomatic diffraction summarizes a particular way of handling social and cultural problems. It is about social taboos that are affectively charged: even if everybody knows the elephant is there, they ignore it. In this article, we are grappling with disappearance acts related to race and racialization at a white-dominated Danish university. Race is simultaneously there and not there in organizational policies and practices preoccupied with governing diversity. Using a recent debate over ‘prayer rooms’ in educational institutions, we develop a methodology (‘idiomatic diffraction’) sensitive towards race and racialization in contexts dominated by whiteness. Leaning on Karen Barad, we argue that diffraction may open up a space from where light can be explored in the shadows of what Sylvia Wynter names ‘Man’s Project’.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116116.

https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116116.

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Securitized Intimacies, Welfare State and the “Other” Family’. (2016) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Securitized Intimacies, Welfare State and the “Other” Family’. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, vol. 24, no. 2, Dec. 2017, pp. 154–177.

Analyzing policy documents that aim to tackle violence in minority families, the article examines how normativities related to family, ethnicity, and race are created and challenged. The article develops an analysis of how neoliberal governmentality operates in two Nordic welfare societies. It shows how the governing of ethnicized and racialized minority families is built on three logics: the normalizing family, normative (liberal) individuality, and securitized border rhetoric. Identifying three policy frames (violence, immigration, and security frames), the article argues that the presented ideas of family life and individuality are based on normative whiteness.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/679204.

PDF: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/files/108288979/Keskinen_Suvi_Securitized_Intimacies_2017.pdf

Lapina, Linda. ‘“Diversity Tourists”? Tracing Whiteness through Affective Encounters with Diversity in a Gentrifying District in Copenhagen’ (2020)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lapiņa, Linda. ‘“Diversity Tourists”? Tracing Whiteness through Affective Encounters with Diversity in a Gentrifying District in Copenhagen’. Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 0, no. 0, Routledge, June 2020, pp. 1–20.

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:10.1080/14649365.2020.1783349.

Lapina, Linda. ‘Recruited into Danishness? Affective Autoethnography of Passing as Danish’. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lapiņa, Linda. ‘Recruited into Danishness? Affective Autoethnography of Passing as Danish’. European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, SAGE Publications Ltd, Feb. 2018, pp. 56–70.

This article critically examines emergence of Danishness via an autoethnography of passing as Danish. Drawing on feminist scholarship, the author conceptualizes passing as an embodied, affective and discursive relation; simultaneously spontaneous and laboured, fleeting and solid, emergent and constrained by past becomings. Once positioned as a young female uneducated Eastern European love migrant in Denmark, the author now usually passes as an accomplished migrant. However, conducting fieldwork in Copenhagen, she found herself passing as Danish. These shifting positionings from (un)wanted migrant to un(re)marked majority comprised a unique boundary position for tracing Danishness. Her body and Danishness became aligned, while other bodies were ejected. These fluctuating (dis)alignments highlighted potentialities of proximity to Danishness. Using autoethnography and memory work, the author develops an affective methodology. The encounters’ embodied affective circulations are simultaneously collective capacities illuminating material-discursive-affective contours of Danishness. The article makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to feminist-inspired research on race, whiteness, embodiment and affect in Nordic and European contexts.

doi:10.1177/1350506817722175.

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1350506817722175

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

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

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.

Larsen, Jeppe. ‘Talking about Radicalization’. (2019)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Larsen, Jeppe. ‘Talking about Radicalization’. Nordic Journal of Criminology, vol. 21, Oct. 2019, pp. 1–18.

This article seeks to build a bridge between the criminological tradition of research on hard-to-reach groups and sensitive topics and the tradition of critical research on radicalization. As a result of the hard-to-reach character of so-called radicals themselves, the article analyzes interview experiences with ‘professionals’ working within the prevention of radicalization and other actors. This article discusses the experiences connected to the preparation and unfolding of the interviews on the sensitive topic of radicalization and illustrates how interviews and questions designed to gather knowledge about radicalization processes among Muslims in Denmark often became a discussion about the concept of radicalization itself. This article shows that making use of the concept of radicalization is problematic in interviews as it is embedded in the Danish political discourse on immigration, Muslims and Islam. This article reflects on researcher positionality and how being a white ethnic Danish researcher might have caused an underestimation of how problematic the concept is to people directly involved with it, and that speaking from such a researcher positionality also can make the concept of radicalization seem even more problematic.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2578983X.2019.1685805

Loftsdóttir, Kristín, and Lars Jensen, editors. Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. (2012)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Loftsdóttir, Kristín, and Lars Jensen, editors. Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. 1st edition, F arnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2012. This book examines the influence of imperialism and colonialism on the formation of national identities in the Nordic countries, exploring the manner in which contemporary discourses in Nordic society are rendered meaningful or obscured by references to past events and tropes related to the practices and ideologies of colonialism. Against the background of Nordic ‘exceptionalism’, it explores the manner in which the interwoven racial, gendered and nationalistic ideologies associated with the colonial project form part of contemporary Nordic identities. An important challenge to national identities that can become increasingly inward looking, Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region sheds light on the ways in which certain notions and structural inequalities, understood as residue from the colonial period, become recreated or projected onto different groups. Presenting a variety of case studies drawn from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Greenland, Denmark and Iceland, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and humanities conducting research in the fields of race and ethnicity, identity and belonging, media representations of ‘the other’ and colonialism and postcolonialism.

Contents: Introduction: Nordic exceptionalism and Nordic ’others’, Kristi­n Loftsdottir and Lars Jensen; Colonial discourse and ambivalence: Norwegian participants on the colonial arena in South Africa, Erlend Eidsvik; Colonialism, racism and exceptionalism, Christina Petterson; ’Words that wound’: Swedish Whiteness and its inability to accommodate minority experiences, Tobias Hubinette; Belonging and the Icelandic others: situating Icelandic identity in a postcolobial context, KristÃin Loftsdottir; Transnational influences, gender equality and violence in Muslim families, Suvi Keskinen; Reading history through Finnish exceptionalism, Anna Rastas; Danishness as Whiteness in crisis: emerging post-imperial and development aid anxieties, Lars Jensen; Bodies and boundaries, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and Serena Maurer; Intimacy with the Danish nation-state: my partner, the Danish state and I – a case study of family reunification policy in Denmark, Linda Lund Pedersen; Aesthetics and ethnicity: the role of boundaries in contemporary Sami and Tornedalian art, Anne Heith; Index.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/whiteness-postcolonialism-nordic-region-krist%C3%ADn-loftsd%C3%B3ttir-lars-jensen/e/10.4324/9781315547275

Lykke, Nina. ‘Transversal Dialogues on Intersectionality, Socialist Feminism and Epistemologies of Ignorance’. (2020) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Lykke, Nina. ‘Transversal Dialogues on Intersectionality, Socialist Feminism and Epistemologies of Ignorance’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 3, Routledge, July 2020, pp. 197–210.

Through a personalized story, anchored in historical reflections on the formative years of feminist research in the Nordic context in the early 1970s, the article engages in transversal conversations. The focus is dissonances and resonances between intersectional feminisms and socialist feminisms, and their critiques of monocategorical (neo)liberal feminisms. The method is transversal dialoguing, implying that participants in politically conflicted conversations, shift between “rooting” (situating their own stakes along the lines of feminist epistemologies of situated knowledges) and “shifting” (seriously trying to imagine what it takes to inhabit the situated perspective of interlocutors). A starting point for the article’s transversal conversations is recent critiques of white feminist intersectionality research in Nordic and broader European contexts, claimed to neoliberalize and whitewash intersectionality. Shifting to the perspective of the critics, the author takes responsibility for her stakes in epistemologies of white ignorance. A historical reflection on her becoming a socialist feminist in the context of New Left students’ and feminist movements in Denmark in the aftermath of the students’ revolts of 1968 is used as prism to a discussion of socialist feminisms in the Nordic context in the 1970s, and their paradoxes of being attentive to class, while entangled in classic marxism’s eurocentrism and epistemologies of white ignorance. To dig further into the question of genealogies of leftwing epistemologies of ignorance, characterizing Nordic socialist feminism in the 1970s (and haunting European socialism more generally), the article critically rereads a piece of the authors’ research from the 1970s—an analysis of the work of socialist feminist, Alexandra Kollontaj, and her role in the Russian revolution. Rooting, the author suggests that the epistemologies of white ignorance in Nordic feminist research rather than emerging from monocategoricality and (neo) neoliberalism, as the critics suggest, should be sought after through a critical scrutiny of leftwing versions of eurocentrism.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2019.1708786.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1708786.

Muasya, Gabriella Isadora Nørgaard, Noella Chituka Birisawa, and Tringa Berisha. ‘Denmark’s Innocent Colonial Narrative’. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Muasya, Gabriella Isadora Nørgaard, Noella Chituka Birisawa, and Tringa Berisha. ‘Denmark’s Innocent Colonial Narrative’. Kult, vol. 15, 2018, pp. 56–69.

This paper analyses the multifaceted expressions of white innocence in the educational game Historiedysten(2016) published by Danish Broadcasting Corporation(DR) in collaboration with The Museum of National History Frederiksborg Castle. This case study of Historiedystendisplays how a racial grammar embedded in the Danish physical and cultural archives continue to shape and (re)producea restricted, innocent Danish self-representation, as well as a dominant model of ‘thinking, feeling and speaking’ about the Danish colonial history.1The paper concludes that colonial power relations continue to transcend time and space via Historiedysten, proving that the downplaying of violence, oppression, and legitimisation of racism is intrinsic to Danish white innocence in the colonial narrative.

http://postkolonial.dk/kult-15-racism-in-denmark/

PDF: http://postkolonial.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/8_Berisha-Birisawa-Muasya_final.pdf.

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

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

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]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

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

Myong, Lene, and Michael Nebeling Petersen. ‘(U)levelige slægtskaber. En analyse af filmen “Rosa Morena”’. (2012) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Myong, Lene, and Michael Nebeling Petersen. ‘(U)levelige slægtskaber. En analyse af filmen “Rosa Morena”’. K&K – Kultur og Klasse, vol. 40, no. 113, 113, June 2012, pp. 119–132. tidsskrift.dk,

The Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010) tells an unusual story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a poor black Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical framework of biopolitics and affective labour the article highlights how the male homosexual figure is cast as heteronormative and white in order to gain cultural intelligibility as a parent and thus to become the bearer of a liveable kinship. The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. The adoption, simultaneously, folds a white male homosexual population into life and targets a racialized and poor population as always already dead.

doi:10.7146/kok.v40i113.15724.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/kok/article/view/15724

Nebeling Petersen, Michael, and Lene Myong. ‘(Un)Liveabilities: Homonationalism and Transnational Adoption’. (2015)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Nebeling Petersen, Michael, and Lene Myong. ‘(Un)Liveabilities: Homonationalism and Transnational Adoption’. Sexualities, vol. 18, no. 3, SAGE Publications Ltd, Mar. 2015, pp. 329–345.

Rosa Morena tells a story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a black poor Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical framework of biopolitics and affective labour the article highlights how the male homosexual figure is being cast as heteronormative and white in order to become intelligible as a parent and the bearer of liveable kinship. The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuitable parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship.

doi:10.1177/1363460714544809.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460714544809.

Pedersen, Linda Lund. ‘Kønsforskel Og Neutralitet – Danske Tørklædedebatter Set Gennem Luce Irigarays Teori om Kønsforskel Og Den Anden’. (2008) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Pedersen, Linda Lund. ‘Kønsforskel Og Neutralitet – Danske Tørklædedebatter Set Gennem Luce Irigarays Teoriom Kønsforskel Og Den Anden’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 4, 4, Dec. 2008.

This article adopts a philosophical approach to Danish media and parliamentary debates on Muslim headscarves. Through the use of Luce Irigaray’s theories on sexual difference it suggests a new perspective. It argues that the debates have generally failed to recognize the other (i.e. the Muslim veiled woman) as the other. Ultimately this is due to dominant (white, Christian) culture being unable to accept and understand difference – in particular sexual difference as its foundation. In the meeting with the other, the other is reduced to the same.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v0i4.27944.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/27944.      

Skadegård, M. C., and Iben Jensen. ‘“There Is Nothing Wrong with Being a Mulatto”: Structural Discrimination and Racialised Belonging in Denmark’. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Skadegård, M. C., and Iben Jensen. ‘“There Is Nothing Wrong with Being a Mulatto”: Structural Discrimination and Racialised Belonging in Denmark’. Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, July 2018, pp. 451–465.

This article addresses structural discrimination in everyday lives of non-white Danes and Danes of mixed racial heritage. We explore how discrimination (implicit, underlying, and discursive) is expressed and resisted in seemingly neutral interactions. Using structural discrimination as our framework, we look at how this type of discrimination contributes to the racialization of national belonging in Danish contexts. In particular, we examine how notions of ‘Danishness’ are discursively linked to constructions of whiteness. Further, we discuss some challenges that arise for racially ‘mixed’ and other racialized Danes in regard to constructions of Danishness. Such constructions, we argue, rely on (and express) racialized understandings and discriminatory assumptions which explicitly and implicitly influence the experience of (and potential for), belonging within constructions of Danishness. Our findings suggest that particular dilemmas arise in the lives of Danes with mixed racial heritage and other non-white Danes.

doi:10.1080/07256868.2018.1484346.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/files/318930687/Nothing_wrong_with_being_a_Mulatto.pdf.

Khawaja, Iram. ‘Anger, Shame and Whiteness: On Using Memory Work as an Educational Tool for Reflections on Racialization, Otherness and Privilege’. (2020)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Khawaja, Iram. ‘Anger, Shame and Whiteness: On Using Memory Work as an Educational Tool for Reflections on Racialization, Otherness and Privilege’. Nordic Journal of Social Research, 2020.

The article draws on years of experience teaching otherness, racialization and whiteness on a postgraduate level in Copenhagen, and aims to analyze how it is possible to facilitate constructive discussions on race, whiteness and otherness utilizing memory work. The article is structured around three main points of relevance, which are connected to the main challenges of teaching sensitive topics such as racism, whiteness and privilege in majoritized class rooms. Challenges such as the need to negotiate teacher authority and manage the affective intensities in the class room. The aim of the article is to unfold a form of ‘engaged pedagogical’ strategy for critical reflections on racialization and whiteness in academia highlighting the need to move towards new ways of understanding knowledge production, teacher positionality and lived life as part of curriculum.

https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/iram-khawaja(d5c034f8-2f3f-4e2d-ad31-f4169167546a)/publications/anger-shame-and-whiteness(99861bf7-fb1c-45b9-a5d1-c1d1675dcc9f).html

Moffat, Katie Louise. Crisis Politics in Contemporary Nordic Film Culture: Representing Race and Ethnicity in a Transforming Europe. (2018) [PDF]

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Moffat, Katie Louise. Crisis Politics in Contemporary Nordic Film Culture: Representing Race and Ethnicity in a Transforming Europe. PhD Dissertation. University of Stirling, Nov. 2018,

Identity politics in the Nordic region, that is, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, is in crisis. While these five small nations have garnered a reputation for their perceived exceptionalism, liberal progressiveness and strong welfare-orientated agendas, over the last thirty years, immigration into the Nordic region has increased significantly, and the political and cultural debates over ethnicity and belonging have become more intensely polarised. However, the film cultures of these five small nations have responded to these developments in complex and multifaceted ways giving rise to a broad calibre of film texts that both challenge and reinforce dominant perceptions of national identity. 

This thesis attempts to provide some insight into how wider political and ideological shifts have influenced onscreen representations of ethnicity and race over the last three decades. It does so by exploring a range of genres including comedy, social realism, art-house and documentary cinema using close textual and thematic analysis to unearth a region wrestling with the influences of globalisation. The thesis also situates this analysis in relation to film policies relevant to each respective national Nordic film institute, all of whom play an essential role in dictating the direction of Nordic film and media culture. 

Consequently, this research shows that representations of ethnic identity are shaped by ethnocentric perceptions of Nordic whiteness where ‘ethnic Nordic’ characters typically turn the experiences and perspectives of ethnic minorities into their own. However, it also demonstrates how a diversification of production channels, media policy directives and an emerging generation of filmmakers are challenging fixed perceptions of ethnic and racial identities and their relationships with conventional notions of ‘Nordicness.’ These contributions enhance the current scholarship on Nordic film culture by foregrounding the politics of race and ethnicity and further developing the theoretical argument for locating Nordic cinema in the global, transnational context.

PDF: http://dspace.stir.ac.uk/handle/1893/29975.

Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. (2019)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Hervik, Peter, editor. Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019.

This book represents a comprehensive effort to understand discrimination, racialization, racism, Islamophobia, anti-racist activism, and the inclusion and exclusion of minorities in Nordic countries. Examining critical media events in this heavily mediatized society, the contributors explore how processes of racialization take place in an environment dominated by commercial interests, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives and sentiments, and a surprising lack of informed research on national racism and racialization. Overall, in tracing how these individual events further racial inequalities through emotional and affective engagement, the book seeks to define the trajectory of modern racism in Scandinavia.

Content:

 1. Peter Hervik:

Racialization in the Nordic Countries: An Introduction

2. Mathias Danbolt, Lene Myong:

 Racial Turns and Returns: Recalibrations of Racial Exceptionalism in Danish Public Debates on Racism

3. Tuija Saresma:

Politics of Fear and Racialized Rape: Intersectional Reading of the Kempele Rape Case

4. Mahitab Ezz El Din:

 News Media Racialization of Muslims: The Case of Nerikes Allehanda’s Publishing of the Mohamed Caricature

5. Asta Smedegaard Nielsen:

White Fear: Habitual Whiteness and Racialization of the Threat of Terror in Danish News Journalism

6. Sayaka Osanami Törngren:

 Talking Color-Blind: Justifying and Rationalizing Attitudes Toward Interracial Marriages in Sweden

7. Mantė Vertelytė, Peter Hervik:

The Vices of Debating Racial Epithets in Danish News Media Discourse

 8. Carolina S. Boe, Karina Horsti:

Anti-Racism from the Margins: Welcoming Refugees at Schengen’s Northernmost Border

9. Christian Stokke:

Do Antiracist Efforts and Diversity Programs Make a Difference? Assessing the Case of Norway

10. Camilla Haavisto:

The Power of Being Heard: How Claims Against Racism Are Constructed, Spread, and Listened to in a Hybrid Media Environment

11. Kjetil Rødje, T. S. Thorsen:

(Re)Framing Racialization: Djurs Sommerland as a Battleground of (Anti-)Racism

12. Nasar Meer:

Whiteness and Racialization

http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-74630-2.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319746296

Brade, Lovise. ‘“Just So You Know; I’m Absolutely Completely Normal!”—An Empirical Investigation of Firstness’. (2015)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Brade, Lovise. ‘“Just So You Know; I’m Absolutely Completely Normal!”—An Empirical Investigation of Firstness’. NORA: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 23, July 2015.

What is it like to be a white Danish male heterosexual engineer? What is it like to enjoy societal privileges without even noticing it? In a liberal egalitarian and consensus-seeking country like Denmark, theses questions are hard, if not impossible, to ask. We are very used to talking about and diagnosing “the Others” (in various forms) but what happens when the analytical gaze is turned towards the unproblematized majority – “the Firsts”? This article share insights from a fieldwork among a group of “perfectly normal” engineers in a large Danish consulting company and suggests firstness as an im/perceptible position depending largely on context and what kind of “Other” it relates to. The article also proposes ways to navigate when engaging methodologically and analytically with firstness.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08038740.2015.1045939

Andreassen, Rikke. ‘The Search for the White Nordic: Analysis of the Contemporary New Nordic Kitchen and Former Race Science’. (2014)

~ Dansk Racismeforskning

Andreassen, Rikke. ‘The Search for the White Nordic: Analysis of the Contemporary New Nordic Kitchen and Former Race Science’. Social Identities, vol. 20, no. 6, Nov. 2014, pp. 438–451.

The article analyzes the so-called ‘New Nordic Kitchen’ and its award-winning Copenhagen-based restaurant, Noma. Despite the fact that the idea of the New Nordic Kitchen, where only ingredients found naturally in the Nordic territories can be used for cooking, has gained huge popularity among ordinary people and politicians alike, very limited critical research has been done on the phenomenon. This article investigates how the New Nordic Kitchen plays into constructions of race and whiteness. It shows how the New Nordic Kitchen celebrates an ideal of ‘the Nordic’ as ‘pure’, ‘wild’ and isolated from globalization and immigration. Furthermore, it argues that the image of Nordic food, displayed in the New Nordic Kitchen – including the idea of Nordic food as a messenger between a celebrated past and contemporary times – is rather exclusionary towards Nordic racial minorities, e.g. recently arrived immigrants and descendants. The article includes an analysis of Nordic race science from the turn of the twentieth century in order to illustrate how the New Nordic Kitchen draws upon a longer historical tradition of viewing the Nordic, and especially Nordic whiteness, as superior. The historical importance of race science in Denmark is not common knowledge, and very limited research is done in this area. The article therefore also brings new insights to the historical construction of whiteness in the Nordic context. Finally, the article also shows how the New Nordic Kitchen not only draws upon but also continues the colonial power relations between Denmark and former Danish colonies.

doi:10.1080/13504630.2014.1002599.