Session Information
23 SES 08 B, Politics of Equity and Inclusion: Focus on Immigrants
Paper Session
Contribution
Historically, immigration has been understood as both a benefit and a threat for the Danish society. From around 1800, when the nation state was about to build up and the role of power was changing from “maintaining the integrity of a territory” to “the management of populations”, social reforms and welfare appeared on the agenda, and laws were passed to regulate the migration of “travelling workers” and “foreigners” (Jønsson & Petersen, 2010:135). During the 1950s and 1960s massive welfare state reforms were implemented in a whole range of sectors, which took in a period of economic growth and low unemployment. Immigrants were invited during the 1960s to work in the newly industrialized production sector. However, already from the 1960s, and intensified from the 1980s, when unemployment rates exploded, “the stranger ” emerges as a disturbing social challenge, and immigration was reduced by law from 1970. New specialised policies were developed to “order” immigrants and their descendents through moral regulation, interventions and endeavours of integration, not least in the area of education. Today, the state is increasingly developing programmes to combat what is termed “ghettos”, “fundamentalism” or “anti-democratic behaviour”. Furthermore, the state seeks to enhance the smooth incorporation of immigrants to become ‘Danes’ and making a wilful contribution to the Danish workforce.
The main question that we wish to pursue in this article is the following: How does a welfare state, based on a progressive tax paid system, universalism and social rights as regards its citizens, deal with immigrants and their descendents through education? Additionally we pursue a supplementary question that links clearly to the socio-material and symbolic practice around schools. If group-making is part of the national welfare state’s practice and policy, then we want to know: how does such a state manage to make this differential treatment of human beings work legitimately, i.e. what arguments, what interventions and moralisations, are used and how are they (if they are) accepted by the professions implementing them and the ‘group’ pointed out as in need of interventions and moralisations?
The Danish case is particular in terms of its historical development compared to, for example, the English case. Denmark was, as England, a colonial power exploiting a huge number of slaves in the 1700s, which played a part in the succeeding material and symbolic construction of the nation state. Another distinctiveness of the Danish case is that the development and legacy of Danish progressive pedagogy, and of the idea of schooling for democracy, is tied to the defence of Denmark during the Second World War, and thus embedded in national symbols (Øland, 2010; Kaspersen, 2006). This way of thinking is challenged by globalisation and especially by migration and the presence of immigrants. Thus, the Danish case is suited to exhibit the character of what joins up and happens around the proliferation of discourse and practices as regards “the problem of the immigrant” in a small nation state in comparison to other national cases with other types of familiarity with “the stranger” (Arnot, Pinson, & Candappa, 2009, 2010; Raveaud & van Zanten, 2007).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Arnot, M., Pinson, H., & Candappa, M. (2009). Compassion, caring and justice: teachers' strategies to maintain moral integrity in the face of national hostility to the "non-citizen". Educational Review , 61 (3), pp. 249-264. Arnot, M., Pinson, H., & Candappa, M. (2010). Education, Asylum and the "Non-Citizen" Child. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jønsson, H. V., & Petersen, K. (2010). Danmark: Den nationale velfærdsstat møder verden. In G. Brochmann, & A. Hagelund (Eds.), Velferdens grenser (pp. 131-209). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Kaspersen, L. B. (2006). The Formation and Development of the Welfare State. I J. L. Campbell, J. A. Hall, & O. K. Pedersen (Red.), National identity and the Varieties of Capitalism. The Danish Experience (s. 99-132). Québec: McGill-Queen's University Press. Raveaud, M., & van Zanten, A. (2007). Choosing the local school: middle class parents' values and social and ethnic mix in London and Paris. Journal of Education Policy , 22 (1), pp. 107-124. Øland, T. (2010). A state ethnography of progressivism: Danish school pedagogues and their efforts to emancipate the powers of the child, the people and the culture 1929-1960. Praktiske Grunde. Nordisk tidsskrift for kultur- og samfundsvidenskab , 4 (1-2), s. 57-89. Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts. A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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