Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State
Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State provides an ambiguous yet disturbing portrait of the inner workings of the Danish welfare state and its implications in a context of globalisation and migration.
Through a sociological interview-study with welfare workers, this book describes how processes of othering are undercurrents of welfare work. The processes construct immigrants and refugees as a kind of people who are not only culturally different but also behind, deficient and weak, and thus assigned the potential to benefit from welfare work. These processes are designated to advance a racial welfare dynamic of remedial circularity which keeps the immigrant and refugee on the threshold of modern living and democracy. It is thus depicted how welfare work is intertwined not with a biological framework but with a cultural framework naturalising and ontologising cultural differences. The book examines how welfare work tends to appreciate immigrants and refugees as dislocated people with a cultural lack and how it abides by the dictums of civilising expansions and humanitarian imperialism within the modern state.
This book will be useful for every scholar who wants to reconsider and think differently about how the welfare state is going to proceed in a global society.
Trine land , PhD, is Associate Professor in Educational Research at the University of Copenhagen. Her primary fields of study are the history and sociology of progressive education and welfare state progressivism, and racialisation and classification processes in connection with the emergence and transformation of educational ideas and practices. She is head of the research group The History and Sociology of Welfare Work at University of Copenhagen.
Welfare Work with Immigrants and Refugees in a Social Democratic Welfare State
Trine land
First published 2019
by Routledge
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2019 Trine land
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ISBN: 978-1-138-57841-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-26444-0 (ebk)
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Contents
PART I
Introductions
PART II
Symbolic resources mobilised in welfare work addressing immigrants and refugees
PART III
Societal forms operating welfare work addressing immigrants and refugees
The Nordic or social democratic welfare state has been studied as a model for a long period of time and it has been praised for its universal social rights and its generosity. This book investigates the less immediately visible aspects of the social democratic welfare state by scrutinising the inner workings of this welfare state when it meets the immigrant and the refugee. In this encounter the positive social policies assigning rights to all seem to be accompanied by negative cultural policies cornering behaviour and practices which differ from those which qualify as universal standards. The inner workings of the welfare state are to a great extent orchestrated by welfare workers in different welfare areas, and these workers are the foundational basis for this books analysis. I have written this book out of a profound interest in knowing how welfare work within a national welfare state functions and has effects in an era of migration and globalisation, what its social dynamics and mechanisms are and what kind of a society it helps to create.
I thank all the welfare workers who have been interviewed for the project behind this book and who helped me discover other welfare workers that would be interesting for me to talk to. I am deeply grateful for the knowledge and the stories welfare workers have shared with me and for all the advice they have given me.
The analyses have been in the pipeline for some time and many colleagues have listened to my difficulties understanding the matter of the analyses, commented on presentations of subanalyses at conferences and seminars, and read and commented on drafts of chapters.
First, I want to thank my colleagues in the collective research project Professional Interventions as a Statecrafting Grammar Addressing The Immigrant (20132016), funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, and which was the initial setting for the project that is the foundation for this book: Bolette Moldenhawer, University of Copenhagen; Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University; and Marta Padovan-zdemir, University College VIA. A very special thanks to Anne Sofie Trangeled Larsen, University of Copenhagen, who was my projects fabulous student research assistant for almost two years and who contributed immensely to the interview project by always thinking differently and asking vigilant questions. Anne Sofie has no responsibility whatsoever for the result of the project, about which I am sure she will have radical questions and constructive comments in solidarity with not me but the research project and its effects. What great company.
Second, I would like to give thanks to the participants of the research group The History and Sociology of Welfare Work, Section of Education, University of Copenhagen, who since 2014 on a regular basis have been a productive and most fruitful setting for discussions about welfare work dynamics and welfare state developments across a diverse range of research projects. Our discussions are always stimulating. Thanks to Eva Bertelsen, University of Copenhagen; Christian Sandbjerg Hansen, Aarhus University; and Jan Thorhauge Frederiksen, University of Copenhagen who participated earlier on, and thanks to Marianne Brodersen, Roskilde University and University College Absalon; Tine Brndum, University of Copenhagen; Lone Bk Brnsted, University of Copenhagen and University College Copenhagen; Bjrn Hamre, University of Copenhagen; Malene Kubstrup Nelausen, University of Copenhagen and University College Copenhagen; Sofie Rosengaard, University of Copenhagen; Stine Saaby, University of Copenhagen and University College Copenhagen; and Stine Thygesen, University of Copenhagen and University College Copenhagen, who all take part in fostering a fruitful research community of sharing the joys and dismays of our work and everything that comes along with it.
Third, I have enjoyed important support and encouragement from researchers such as Stephen J. Ball, University College London; Mara Fridell, University of Manitoba; David Gillborn, Birmingham University; Rasmus Prstmann Hansen, University College Copenhagen; Kirsten Hvenegrd-Lassen, Roskilde University; Vibe Larsen, University College Copenhagen; Susan Prentice, University of Manitoba; Ray Silvius, University of Winnipeg; and Andrew Woolford, University of Manitoba. At the Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, I have spent two research stays (in 2015 and 2017) which helped me focus and enabled me to spend time just thinking about welfare work in a global context of refugee arrivals and migrations. I thank you all for your hospitality.
