Sensemakings in the wake of the Special Act on Displaced Ukrainians
Danish asylum and integration policies are among the most restrictive in Europe. In the article 'Have we ever heard about Ukrainians causing trouble?' How integration workers in Denmark make sense of the Special Act on Displaced Ukrainians, published in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Emilie M. Blinkenberg and Trine Øland from Section for Education explores how integration workers in four Danish municipalities handle the ‘softer’ approach to Ukrainians within broader affective economies of the Danish welfare state.
The article identifies three white sensemakings: one that counters differential treatment and deploys the logic of the normal restrictive policies and their suspicious and criminalizing approach to refugees, another that acknowledges special treatment by reference to proximity, Europeanness and likeness, and a third that evades the issue of discrimination and invests in white innocence enabling the organisation of discriminatory practices.
The article contributes to important understanding of integration work’s ambiguous role in effectuating the welfare state’s practices of inequality, relational racialisation and white flexibility that denigrates refugeeness and expose some groups to state violence while welcoming and protecting others. Affect and sensibilities play a critical, however, complex role in hardening inequalities and racialisations, and as such the article argues that they merit special attention as points for transformation.
Further information: Associate Professor Trine Øland, troeland@hum.ku.dk