This paper contributes knowledge creation on two different, but intimately linked, levels. The first is an analytical level and the second is a methodological level. At the analytical level the paper addresses the issue of understanding how Danish-ness is constructed in two historical settings characterized by great upheavals in popular moral codes, culture and national self-imagery. The first setting is the first decade after World War II and the second setting is the post-9/11 era. The empirical focus is on the way police officers and adjoining professionals of the Danish welfare nation-state construct ‘disturbing/disquieting behavior’, delinquency, and misbehavior and how these constructions are made into a category that activates educational and other interventions. Using a comparative outlook between the two historical settings the purpose is to understand 1) the boundaries of legitimate behavior and membership of the Danish community inside the Danish welfare nation-state, and 2) the transformations of these boundaries according to the Danish state’s changing (inter-state) relations within the regional and global community.
At the methodological level the paper works with the research question of how it is possible to adequately bring two different types of sources from two different periods to communicate in order to conduct history research on the construction of Danishness across the periods?