Race and racialisation in modern education and welfare work – masked as culture, ethnicity and benevolent policy?
There has been scholarly reluctance to engage with race, racialisation and colonialism throughout the social and humanistic sciences in Europe, and it seems as if the reluctance has been particularly dominant within the Nordic countries, which are often celebrated as universal and generous welfare states. Nordic research on modern welfare work and educational studies tend to work within a paradigm of ethnicity, migration and policy solutions if it engages in issues related to race and racialisation at all. Race and racialisation are somehow studied, although masked or conceptualized as concerning questions of culture and culturalisation, or ethnicity, ethnification and minoritisation to avoid the fixity associated with race. But as a consequence, subjects nevertheless seem to be constructed as having capabilities (ability, potential, performance measures, etc.) related to an ascribed membership to a population group, i.e. an ethnic group. Thus, emphasising cultural or ethnic difference may function as a marker of race. Simultaneously, the mechanisms embedded in welfare work and education tends to be left in the shadow, whereby the spotlight is pointed only to the problems faced by the subjects welfare workers set out to ‘help’. In this way, attention is continually contained to the problems and deficiencies attributed to immigrants, refugees and ethnic minorities.
The foundational assumptions about immigrants, refugees and ethnic minorities ‘in need of help’ from welfare workers and educators are not normally analysed, and assumptions about the need for social and cultural policies to solve the ascribed problems and deficiencies are often left unexamined. Race and racialization continues to be contested terrain and are usually silenced or cut out of the scientific knowledge fabric.
The purpose of this seminar is to discuss which understandings could be gained if race and racialisation were used more systematically, and as a consequence, what is at risk of being silenced if these concepts continue not to be applied. In order to analyse the history and sociology of the modern state, its helping welfare services, and its possible connections to historical processes of colonialism and racism, race and racialisation may need to be engaged analytically. Furthermore, such considerations will point to more fundamental questions about the role of social and humanistic sciences in the processes of (re)constructing modern Europe which to some extent is founded on distance and separation.
Programme
10:00 - 12:00 Public lecture: The Challenge of Criticality: Researching Race and Racism
in Contemporary Europe
Professor David Gillborn, Head of Centre for Research in Race & Education
(CRRE), University of Birmingham
Venue: Auditorium 22.0.11
The lecture will examine some of the most fundamental challenges facing researchers who are interested in inequity in ethnically diverse societies. For example, whose assumptions and insights should guide research? If we want to challenge inequity we need to gather relevant data but, if there is ‘no such thing as race’, how can we ethically gather and analyse data in relation to racial and/or ethnic groups?
Suggested readings:
- Gillborn, D. and G. Ladson-Billings (2017). Critical race theory, Europa og pædagogik og uddannelse. Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift 3:27-36
- Younge, G. (2018). How the far right has perfected the art of deniable racism, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/26/far-right-racism-electoral-successes-europe-us-bigotry
Lunch
13:00 - 16:00 Workshop (venue: room 16-1-16)
Workshop for the research group and invited guests to discuss examples and initial studies of race and racialisation within educational work and welfare work; how do we analyse and interpret such examples; why is it difficult to do so; and what can be gained by doing so?
Three presentations of approximately 20 minutes each to be further discussed and conceptualised cooperatively. Each session will be followed by a short break.
13:10 - 13:50 How can critical race theory inform an analysis of naturalized
understandings of children, childhood and democracy embedded
in Danish Early Childhood pedagogy?
Karen Prins, Associate Professor and PhD-scholar, University College
Copenhagen and University of Roskilde
14.00 - 14.40 Whiteness and racial silences in ‘dialogue meetings’ about Danishness
and national identity: Looking at ‘dialogue meetings’ as processes of
racialisation
Helle Bach Riis, PhD-scholar, Roskilde University
14.50 - 15.30 Othering and colorblindness in Danish welfare work: On racialised
welfare dynamics and the illusion of the Other
Tine Brøndum, PhD, Research Assistant; and Trine Øland, PhD,
Associate Professor, Section of Education, University of
Copenhagen
15.30 - 16.00 Joint discussion and concluding remarks