The political landscape regarding asylum-seekers and refugee protection is changing all over Europe. In January 2021, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen presented her Social Democratic government's goal of “zero asylum seekers” in the future.1 In April 2022, the British government struck a deal with Rwanda for the future resettlement of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers to local camps. The deal was at first obstructed by different court decisions, but in late 2023 the legal framework was renegotiated and the government seems keen to start externalizing people from British territory. Finally, in November 2023 Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni signed a deal with Albania's counterpart, Edy Rama, which said that the latter, as a non-European Union state, would accept and detain asylum-seekers from Italy while their claim for protection was being processed.
These are just three recent examples of the current trend in European refugee policy that legal scholar Jessica Schultz (2021) has coined a “return turn.” The trend includes a discriminatory selection between those individuals who are seen as deserving of protection and those who are not (Crawley and Skleparis 2018; Holmes and Castañeda 2016), and a political eagerness for the latter to be deported, externalized, and abandoned. Zooming in on the case of Denmark, this article explores this radical change in European refugee policy and conceptions of selves and exogenous “others.”
In February 2019, the Danish Parliament (Folketing) passed a change in the Immigration and Repatriation Law, which was referred to as the “paradigm shift” because it heralded a new turn in the relationship between refugees and the Danish state and welfare society (Rytter et al. 2023). From then on, all residence permits were to be temporary, and the agenda was no longer—as it had been in previous decades—to integrate the newly arrived into society; on the contrary, the idea was for refugees to have temporary protection only and to be returned to their countries of origin as soon as possible.
The change was manifested in the establishment of the new Hjemrejsestyrelse (The Danish Return Agency) in August 2020. Once the Immigration Service shortly before Easter 2021 decided to revoke the temporary protection for Syrians from greater Damascus, the paradigm shift was no longer a question of semantics but an indisputable reality. Denmark, which in 1983 prided itself on the world's most humane refugee policy (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Whyte 2011), was now portrayed in national and international media as one of the countries in Europe with the harshest stance.2 Nevertheless, the new strict approach has broad political backing in Parliament and the wider population—a tendency I refer to as “the new realism” in Danish refugee and immigration policy. This article explores how and why this dramatic change took place.
Inspired by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich's Grammars of Identity/Alterity (2004a), this article argues that previous decades of policy focused on the “integration”3 of refugees and immigrants no less than the new agenda of deportation relies on an underlying structural grammar according to which refugees (and immigrants) are placed in the role of exogenous “others” who will never truly be seen and recognized as part of Danish society and the national community. Whereas the political goal of “integration” was the inclusion of refugees so as to facilitate their recognition as Danish, the current trend toward revocation, repatriation, and deportation promote a nostalgic political utopia of restoring a homogenous ethnic society and all-white nation.
Several researchers have started studying what impact this paradigm shift has had on refugees’ everyday lives (see Bregnbæk 2022a, 2022b; Dånge 2023; Filskov et al. 2022; Kohl 2023; Kusk 2023; Lindberg 2022; Mortensen 2023; Poulsen 2023; Vitus and Jarlby 2022). This article, however, explores what the paradigm shift entails for the Danish population in general and for shared understandings of refugees, common ideas of belonging, and the politics of us vs them. Applying the theoretical tool of grammars of identity enables a move beyond the “butterfly collection” of single case studies and instead facilitates an analysis of how and why the radical changes in the conceptualization of refugees have become accepted as the obvious response to the current refugee situation. In this endeavor, the article finds inspiration in Rane Willerslev's (2011) challenge to fellow anthropologists that we should dare to make bold speculations and perform theoretical experiments. It is also indebted to the dictum of Marianne Gullestad (2002a), not only to focus on minorities but also to study the majorities and attempt to understand their notions of the nation and the welfare society, deservingness, and belonging.
In brief, this article argues that both “integration” and deportation have become state strategies that rely on, legitimize, and expand a structural grammar that denotes a particular, exclusionary vision of Danish society, the Danish nation, and the Danish population—a vision in which refugees and immigrants have no natural affiliation. Instead, they are cast as aliens, “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966), who disrupt the idea and narrative of the homogenous population existing in the time before the modern migration flows that began with the reception of Hungarian refugees in 1956 (Fenger-Grøn and Grøndahl 2004). These migration flows mean that by 2023 approximately 15 per cent of the Danish population will have a lineage and family history that crosses the Danish borders.
This article presents the grammar of identity in three parts as it has developed over time. First, it broadly outlines the emergence of modern Denmark up until the twentieth century, when the narrative of a nation-state and welfare society with a homogenous population with shared values became fully fledged. Second, it discusses the consequences of the political strategy of “integration” that, since the 1990s, has been a never-ending ambitious demand directed at Muslim immigrants and refugees; despite the official strategy, this was a period of increasing polarization between the majority population and ethnic minorities. Third, it discusses how the new emphasis on revocation and deportation in the paradigm shift contributes to consolidating the idea that an orderly society can be recreated by isolating refugees from the rest of society or returning them to their countries of origin. This move is legitimized by the grammar of identity and articulated in the dominant discourse about “the new realism” in Danish immigration policy. The conclusion emphasises the specificity of the Danish case in relation to other grammars of identity known from the ethnographic archive, and it discusses to what extent the current grammar and the nostalgic longing for a pure homogenous Danish society risk mutating into an “anti-grammar” (Baumann and Gingrich 2004b: 194ff.) of ethnic annihilation by means of deportation and externalization.
Before presenting the three parts of the grammar of identity, I begin with some general reflections on the premise on which this article rests: the idea that the Danish majority shares a structural grammar and some basic assumptions about the relationship between, on the one hand, the welfare state, the nation, and the population, and, on the other, exogenous “others” in the guise of immigrants and refugees.
Data and Grammars of Identity
Since the article analyzes radical changes in the Danish majority population's understandings of refugees and immigrants, I do not use conventional ethnographic data such as that obtained via interviews or participant observation.4 Instead, the argument addresses a selection of political ideas and initiatives as they have been presented and discussed over the last 40 years in the Danish public debate that has taken place in newspapers, on radio programs, on the Internet, and even in novels, and have, as such, contributed to casting refugees and immigrants as exogenous “others.” Many of the political initiatives discussed in the article were dismissed as radical or extreme when first presented but resurfaced later in the public debate and became part of the political mainstream. It has been necessary to work and think with this kind of data as I explored a shared structural grammar of identity that most majority Danes would not be able to put into words and reflect upon in a traditional ethnographic interview. In general, people may not be conscious of the grammatical rules that they follow, in the sense of being able to state those rules accurately in propositional forms (Stasch 2018: 67). In that respect, a grammar of identity is our common understanding: it is everything that “goes without saying,” to paraphrase Maurice Bloch (2012).5
The anthology Grammars of Identity/Alterity (Baumann and Gingrich 2004a) presents a general discussion of how identity projects always have a dual nature: first, they rely on how a given individual or group sees and perceives themselves; second, they rely on how individuals and groups are perceived and handled by others. The editors suggest calling this a grammar: “We use the word as a simple shorthand for certain simple classificatory structures or classificatory schemata that we argue can be recognized in a vast variety of processes concerned with defining identity and alterity” (Baumann and Gingritch 2004a: iv). In his chapter, Gerd Baumann (2004) elaborates on how we can understand the idea of structural grammars of identity. Based on his readings of three classics—Orientalism by Edward Said ([1978] 2003), The Nuer by Edward E. Evans-Pritchard (1940), and Homo Hierarchicus by Louis Dumont (1980)—he identifies three grammars or essential figures in the treatment of identity. Said discussed the historical European fascination with and construction of the Orient as an antagonistic dichotomy between “us” and “them”; Evans-Pritchard, studying conflict management among cattle nomads in Sudan, found that the Nuer had developed a segmental principle whereby kin-based groups could in dynamic ways rearrange loyalties and affiliations depending on who the opponent was in a given conflict; and finally, Dumont explored notions of hierarchy and otherness in the Indian caste system, suggesting that these rest on an ability to include “others” by means of encompassment. According to Baumann (2004), these studies from the ethnographic archive demonstrate three fundamentally different ways of handling questions of identity and alterity, each of which can (as I illustrate later) be useful in discussing elements of identity politics in Denmark. However, they cannot account for the current situation, where deportation and the externalization of exogenous “others” have been incorporated into the grammar.
The analytical tool of grammars of identity is affiliated with classical structuralism, as it shares the general understanding of social reality as patterned by systematic deep structures, langue, that are given various expressions in parole, in guise of “speech, use, performance, discourse, practice” (Stasch 2018: 61). Contrary to structuralism, which often implies a larger coherent system where the analyst may sort out and scrutinize relations between different elements, the grammar of identity offers a basic understanding of the relationship between the self and the “other.” Just as linguistic grammars offer a set of rules that allow sentences to be formulated, social grammars offer a set of rules that allow otherings to be articulated (Baumann and Gingrich 2004a: xi).
The grammar of identity is also affiliated to developments in cognitive anthropology that have emphasized the importance of “cultural schemas” as the basis for human action and interaction (e.g., D'Andrade and Strauss 1992; Strauss and Quinn 1997). However, as grammars of identity are collective, shared, and acted upon in and by larger entities, they can be said to structure broader “cultural worlds” (Holland et al. 1998)—in this case, the Danish imagined national community and the asymmetrical relationship between majorities and minorities, selves and “others.”6
Some readers may find it extreme or exaggerated to suggest that the Danish majority population shares a structural grammar of identity that reduces refugees and immigrants to exogenous “others.” Here, it is important to stress that this article is not addressing a situation created overnight by xenophobic citizens, right-wing politicians, or media discourses, but rather certain fundamental understandings that the population—including this author—shares. These understandings came into being through political, economic, and social developments that have given rise to a number of fundamental ideas of what the world is like. In this respect, grammars are both synchronic and diachronic: they offer a way to understand the relationship between the self and the “other” in the current historical moment or situation; however, grammars can also develop and change over time in dialogue with the wider social reality, a point best illustrated by the fact that what used to be common sense in Danish politics in 1983 regarding asylum seekers and refugees has now drastically changed four decades later.
It is also important to stress that arguing that a structural grammar exists does not necessarily entail that everyone ascribes the same value to it. Some may embrace it, others will dispute it and challenge it—but most people will hardly notice it, let alone reflect on it. Just as we do not need to reflect on grammar when we express ourselves through everyday language, we also live with an identity grammar without necessarily reflecting on it. As Baumann and Gingrich emphasize, grammars of identity and grammatical otherings tend to operate in such routinized and taken-for-granted ways that they appear self-evident (2004b: 197).
So, in order to account for the changes in Danish attitudes toward refugees and immigrants over the last 40 years, we have to look at the development of political ideas and understandings of the Danish nation and welfare society over time. For heuristic purposes, I present the grammar in three parts, with Figure 3 showing the grammar fully formed.
Part 1. The Genesis of Denmark: Narrative of a Homogenous Population
The first part of the Danish structural grammar of identity addresses the relationship between the citizens of the society, demos, and the people of the nation, ethnos. There is a prevalent nostalgic idea among the Danish public that, before the arrival of refugees and immigrants, order reigned and there was a natural overlap between the ethnos and the demos. A further shared conviction is that today this state of affairs has changed.
This narrative is far too extensive to receive just treatment in this relatively short article, so this is merely a rough outline. It all began with the mystical birth of Denmark. Saxo's great chronicle, Gesta Danorum, combines myths, legendary heroes, and historical events in one formidable hotch-potch (Zeeberg 2006). The runes on the larger Jelling Stone from the year 965 tell the story of how King Harald Bluetooth introduced Christianity to the Danes. Later, the blessing of the kingdom became a reality when the Danish flag (according to legend) fell down from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse in the year 1219.
A less capricious version begins with more recent historical events that led to the emergence of the national state as we know it today. Historian Uffe Østergaard takes his point of departure in the collapse of the Kalmar Union in 1523. Centuries later followed the massive reduction that the then multiethnic and multilinguistic composite state experienced with the ceding of Norway in 1814, the loss of the southern regions following defeat by Prussian forces in 1864, and the sale of the former colonies St. Croix, St. John, and St Thomas (today The US Virgin Islands) in the Caribbean to the United States in 1917. Eventually, these events were followed by Icelandic independence in 1918 and the home rule agreements with the Faroe Islands in 1948 and Greenland in 1979. In short, this is the tale of a large-scale transformation of the Kingdom of Denmark—from a large composite state to small state (Østergaard 2004). However, it is also the tale of a small nation-state with its own language and a population that rallied around the credo “What is lost externally, must be won internally” (hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes). This was to be achieved via public schooling for children and the folk high school movement (Borish [1990] 2004) together with a national romantic mobilization of the Danish people through contemporary paintings, songs, literature, and politics (Korsgaard 2018).
The most recent historical piece of the nation's emergence was the creation of a welfare society, which began to take shape at the beginning of the twentieth century and which became fully fledged in form and function after the Second World War. The welfare society is based on a vision of using economic redistribution and universal benefits to create a society that accommodates all social groups, reduces inequality, and decreases class divides. According to anthropologist Steffen Jöhncke (2011), the decision to create a welfare society marked from the outset the onset of a wide-scale “integration” project. However, this societal model was not merely motivated by altruistic ideals. Historian Søren Mørch (2003) stresses how the social reforms of the time were also a precautionary measure against unrest and discord between different population groups and social segments (see Karpantschof 2019).
The three parts to the genesis of the nation-state supplement each other in forming the basis for the narrative about the particular character and identity of the Danish population. This often leads politicians, commentators, and researchers alike to describe Denmark as characterized by a “homogenous population”—ethnically, socially, and culturally (Gundelach 2002; Schmidt 2020). Hence, Denmark has been described as “monocultural” (Hedetoft 2006) and the Danish population portrayed as “a tribe” (en stamme) (Rasmussen 2008), a term that indicates a particularly intimate kinship and community within the nation (Rytter 2010). Similarly, both anthropological and ethnological research have discussed how homogeneity, equality, and sameness are emphasized as central values in Denmark (and the rest of the Nordic region), while differences are undercommunicated because “deep down, we agree” (i grunden er vi enige) (Bruun et al. 2011).7
Overall, the ever-present narrative of a homogenous, happy, and equality- and freedom-loving people contributes to emphasizing an ethnonational com- munity consisting of “real” Danes (Rytter 2010)—that is, Danish citizens who speak Danish and have family names and heritage that confirm their position as part of the welfare society and the national community. It is a narrative where ethnos equals demos within the boundaries of the nation.
This narrative has been challenged in recent decades by the arrival of labor migrants, refugees and the act of family reunification (Fig. 1). These people live in Denmark, have residence permits, visas, and perhaps even Danish citizenship; they work, pay taxes, and vote in local and national elections—and yet, they continue to be categorized in public discourse and national statistics as “refugees,” “immigrants,” or “descendants,” and referred to with the descriptors “second-generation” or “third-generation.”
The nostalgic idea is that there used to be an overlap between ethnos and demos. After the arrival of refugees and immigrants, there is now a division of ethnos and demos.
Citation: Social Analysis 67, 3; 10.3167/sa.2023.670301
The discrepancy between ethnos and demos has been addressed in the national mobilization and identity policy pursued by successive governments since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005–2006. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's first liberal- conservative government passed a number of acts in 2002 and 2003 to drastically reduce the right to family reunification with spouses from countries outside the European Union. The “affiliation requirement” (tilknytningskravet) made it especially difficult for Danish citizens with an immigrant background to achieve family reunification (Liversage and Rytter 2014; Rytter 2013). In 2005, Minister for Culture Brian Mikkelsen, representing the Conservative People's Party, called for a “culture battle” (kulturkamp) against the multicultural ideology promoted by the elite of so-called “judges of taste” (smagsdommere) and against a “medieval Muslim culture” (middelalderlig muslimsk kultur)8 among the country's immigrants and refugees (Kublitz 2010). One element in this struggle was to proclaim canons or lists of unique Danish contributions in a variety of arts, including architecture, theater, design, and music. This culminated in 2016 with the launch of an actual “Canon of Denmark” (Danmarkskanon) that identified ten so-called “Danish” values.9 Finally, in 2014 Minister for Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries Dan Jørgensen of the Social Democratic Party spearheaded a high-profile poll to elect the Danish national dish. The winner was crispy fried pork with parsley sauce (stegt flæsk med persillesovs).
All the above examples relate to political initiatives launched to identify who and what characterizes the Danish population and nation while at the same time defining who and what does not belong in this category. In this respect, the arrow often points toward “the usual suspects” (Rytter and Pedersen 2014): refugees and immigrants with a Muslim background from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Part 2. Integration: A Sisyphean Task
The next component of the grammar is connected to how, for decades, until the paradigm shift of 2019, “integration” was the state's strategy for adapting refugees and immigrants to a life in Denmark (Olwig and Pærregaard 2011; Pedersen and Rytter 2006; Rytter 2018, 2019). The way in which the concept of “integration” took shape as a particular form of power, however, in many respects had the opposite effect.
Dutch sociologist Willem Schinkel (2013) has discussed how ethnic minorities are often construed as a particular category of problem due to the way in which they figure in quantitative reviews, studies, and statistics. According to Schinkel, much of this form of knowledge production springs from “ocular centers,” that is, national or private research institutions that continuously produce statistics on how immigrants and refugees perform or fare in areas such as education, work, childbirth, household composition/income, and marriage. They are measured against the majority population, which per se becomes the norm and standard and thus defines what is deviant. This is an effect of the “methodological nationalism” of much social research (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003).
As in the Dutch case discussed by Schinkel, Denmark has—via the civil registration number—a pervasive registry system that collects data on every individual citizen. This provides ample opportunity to compare data and monitor whether particular groups of immigrants and refugees are performing better or worse than they did the previous year. Institutions processing this centrally collected data include the Danish Center for Social Science Research (VIVE), the Danish Knowledge Center for Integration,10 and the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit; moreover, public authorities such as Statistics Denmark and the Ministry of Immigration and Integration produce considerable numbers of reports and statistics on refugees’ and immigrants’ status. The (incomplete) list of ocular centers contributes to the production of a particular kind of quantified knowledge in which refugees and immigrants always appear deficient when compared to the non-marked norm and standard based on the majority. They are thus positioned outside the welfare society and have to accept that all aspects of their existence are framed within a discussion about their “integration” (Schinkel 2013, 2017). In this respect, statistics and quantitative studies of this nature thereby contribute to a systematic production of outsideness and non-belonging among refugees and immigrants (Korteweg 2017). In one sweeping move, the majority population is thus consolidated as the norm and standard while at the same time minority groups are singled out as dissenters who distort the picture and consequently need to change their lifestyle through “integration” so that “they” can become like “us.” Many societal challenges are believed to stem from minorities because they deviate from the majority.
“Integration” is thus a particular power technique that consistently disqualifies these people and asks (instructs) them to make an extra effort to become/appear integrated. “Integration” is a Sisyphean task (Fig. 2) whereby refugees and immigrants must constantly strive to live in accordance with the demand for “integration” at the same time as having to realize, time after time, that this is a lost cause (Rytter 2019). Anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (2002b) suggests that refugees and immigrants constantly have to climb “invisible fences” in order to be accepted and recognized.
In Denmark, “integration” is a state policy and exercise of power that sets before refugees and immigrants a never-ending Sisyphean tasks that they must complete.
Citation: Social Analysis 67, 3; 10.3167/sa.2023.670301
The idea of “integration” and the consistent construing of refugees and immigrants as individuals trying to find their way into society consolidate and expand the chasm between “real” and “not-quite-real” Danes, whereby the latter are the many who have foreign-sounding names or dark complexions that indicate a family or lineage linked to a country other than Denmark. “Integration” contributes to supporting and expanding the nation's imagined community (Anderson 1983), but it does so by outlining an exclusive community—what migration researcher Bridget Anderson (2013) calls a “community of value”—in which the ethnos has become a subset of the demos. It is no longer sufficient to be a citizen; you also need the exclusive quality of being a “real” Dane, which implies considering yourself, and being considered by others, as part of the majority and the nation.
Part 3. New Realism and Deportation as a Solution
When the Danish Folketing in 2019 introduced the paradigm shift, the strategies of deportation and externalization were incorporated into the grammar of identity (Fig. 3)—but the changes in the political agenda did not come out of the blue.
The paradigm shift expands on the previous grammars. The current political strategy for restoring order and harmony is repatriation, deportation, and externalization.
Citation: Social Analysis 67, 3; 10.3167/sa.2023.670301
For decades, a growing skepticism has been discernible toward immigrants and refugees across Europe, with cultural differences and ethnic diversity in a population often portrayed as a political challenge and a threat to social cohesion (sammenhængskraften) (Jensen et al. 2019). In Denmark, the basic narrative is that decades of “integration” policy have failed—a claim that is often ascribed to Poul Nyrup Rasmussen's Social Democratic governments of the 1990s closing their eyes to the problems of immigration and thus being partly responsible for the challenges faced today (Tesfaye 2017). Instead, it has become comme il faut in political discussions and public debate to present yourself as tough on questions related to refugees and immigrants. What used to be a position and rationale of the extreme right is today a discourse shared by most parties on the political spectrum.11 I refer to this new mainstream position in politics and public discourse as the new realism. It may sound sarcastic to call it the new realism, but in doing so I take the proponents seriously when they claim to represent a more realistic approach to refugees and immigrants than previous governments.
The new realism is preoccupied with “integration” but mainly as a form of specter in the political debate given that many politicians and commentators abjure “integration” time after time, repeating that it has failed utterly.12 According to proponents of the new realism, “integration” is dead. The new realism thus serves as, and presents itself as, a response to the idealism and denialism that politicians, commentators, and some researchers claim characterized previous discussions and policies regarding immigrants and refugees. It is a direct break with what is portrayed as misconceived kindness, including that of the so-called “halal hippies” (Khader 2000), who turned a blind eye to issues such as forced marriages, re-education journeys (genopdragelsesrejser), and refugee and immigrant women's lack of involvement in the labor market. Further, it is a backlash against the “naïves” (naivisterne) (Jespersen and Pittelkow 2006) who failed to understand that Muslim immigrants and refugees will radically upend and Islamize the Danish nation and welfare state.
It is important to stress that the new realism does not rest on an intrinsic hostility toward refugees and immigrants. The fundamental argument is that humans are cultural beings. Everyone has a culture that is connected to the place where they were born. This is where they have their natural habitat and affiliation. The problem is that cultures are different, which inevitably causes friction and conflict when they are brought together. Consequently, in order to avoid these issues, everyone should stay within the nation-state or territory where they were born. Turks belong in Turkey, Somalians in Somalia, and Pakistanis in Pakistan. This also means that Denmark is reserved for Danes. This rationale regarding human nature, culture, and belonging as promoted in the new realism is identical to the mindset that anthropologist Verena Stolcke (1995) coined “cultural fundamentalism.” Finally, the new realism takes its point of departure from a concern over scarce resources and the obvious point that Denmark cannot harbor all the world's refugees. This rests on the economic argument that scarce resources can only be spent once, and that, because we need money for priorities such as daycare institutions, public schools, and aging citizens, we have to cut down on efforts directed at refugees. The argument that the Danish state should focus on helping refugees in their so-called “area of proximity” (nærområde) (i.e., a country close to the one they have fled—and far distant from Denmark) is also backed up by the economic rationale that we can help many more people with food and shelter in refugee camps in the Middle East or Africa than if we let them start a new life in Denmark (see Andersson and Jespersen 2018).
The new realism has gained increasing momentum in Danish politics in recent decades, becoming the dominant narrative in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. The new realism insists that decades of “integration” policy and ambitions have failed and that, instead, new and more drastic measures are needed, such as the paradigm shift introduced in 2019. The paradigm shift completes the grammar of identity (Fig. 3) by adding a more hands-on strategy aimed at physically removing groups that are not, and should not be, part of society. The strategies of “integration” and deportation supplement each other and contribute to the construction and expansion of the Danish nation and welfare society as an orderly, harmonious community. It has become a real challenge to imagine political alternatives.
The Grammar of Identity in Action
This article has so far outlined the grammar of identity that was consolidated from the early twentieth century and is now stated in its most explicit and sharpened form in the 2019 paradigm shift. The new political strategy is fundamentally about handling challenges in connection with refugees and immigrants by making them go away and thereby recreating a harmonious nation and welfare society. However, this is far from the first time such a political vision has been articulated in a Danish context. Three examples follow.
In 2000, Karen Jespersen, the then Social Democratic Minister for the Interior, was harshly criticized by her own support base for suggesting that the state ought to “place criminal asylum seekers on a desert island.”13 The idea was viewed as extreme and rabid. Nevertheless, in 2019 the suggestion was implemented when the small island of Lindholm was chosen as a possible camp for rejected asylum seekers. When the plans for Lindholm were taken off the table in 2021, the Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti) instead suggested sending asylum seekers convicted of criminal offences to Greenland for detention at the abandoned naval base at Kangilinnguit, seven miles from Arsuk, the nearest settlement.14
In the years 2011–2014, the Danish government was involved in the initiative European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM), which investigated the possibility of setting up an “education and care center” (uddannelses- og omsorgscenter) in Kabul, a site to which unaccompanied Afghan minors attempting to claim asylum in Denmark could be returned until they turned 18, after which they could be released into Afghan society again (Lemberg-Pedersen 2018, 2021b). This would ensure that they could not seek asylum or claim any affiliation with Denmark.
Finally, the leader of the Danish political party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), Rasmus Paludan, used the abundant airtime he received during his 2019 national election campaign to present his party's radical vision of dividing refugees and immigrants into what he termed “deserving foreigners” (værdige fremmede) and the opposite. Paludan explained how he and the party, if given a sufficient mandate, were willing to deport upward of 500,000 refugees, immigrants, and descendants deemed undeserving of a life in Denmark. Basically, he was musing in the national media about ethnic cleansing through mass deportation.15
Although very different in nature, all three of these examples draw on the structural grammar of Danish identity. The solution is to return refugees to their first homeland, keep them away from Danish territory, and isolate them in camps at locations where they will not need to be engaged with. Out of sight, out of mind—and in this way, the idea of the harmonious nation and well-ordered welfare society can be restored.
A New International Refugee System: Reception Centers in Africa
The grammar of identity also makes ideas of externalizing the asylum process seem legitimate and reasonable. In February 2021, the Social Democratic government introduced a bill in which asylum-processing would be moved to a third country outside the European Union. The idea was to send asylum seekers to a non-specific African country where their case would be processed as a step in changing the international refugee system. It later became known that the Danish government was trying to negotiate a deal with Rwanda.
The idea for camps of this nature was first suggested back in 1986 under Poul Schlüter's (Conservative People's Party) government. The idea then was to establish UN-controlled refugee centers from which people could apply for asylum in Europe, rather than processing asylum applications in specific European countries. The suggestions were rejected by the United Nations and harshly criticized in several countries (Bendixen 2021: 97). The idea was officially reintroduced by the then Social Democratic deputy leader Henrik Sass Larsen in 2016.16 In the spring of 2021, Mette Frederiksen's government took the next step and introduced a bill based on the idea.
In order to honor international obligations, such a camp would probably have to be under Danish management and jurisdiction—a legal, practical, and moral challenge that may prove greater than expected. Further, UNHCR, the African Union and the European Union have strongly repudiated the idea of outsourcing asylum-processing to third countries (see Lemberg-Pedersen 2021a). Nevertheless, diplomatic relations between Denmark and Rwanda have been intensified. Rwanda is promoted in the Danish public debate as one of the most progressive nations in Africa. When the Social Democratic government in 2020 decided to receive refugees once again via the UNHCR resettlement program—from 2016–2020 successive governments had insisted that Denmark “needed a break”—it was an annual quota of two hundred women and children selected from camps in Rwanda (Mortensen et al. 2022). In August 2022, Minister for Development Flemming Møller Mortensen and Minister for Immigration and Integration Kaare Dybvad Bek traveled to Rwanda to discuss the flow of development aid17 and to open a new office (projektkontor) in Kigali aimed at strengthening the bilateral relationship between Denmark and Rwanda.18
The paradigm shift has altered the debate and the political imagination. The utopian/dystopian plans of establishing asylum camps in third countries is completely in keeping with the grammar of identity and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's vision of a future with “zero asylum seekers” coming to Denmark, as mentioned above.
Conclusion
This article has discussed how the paradigm shift and its focus on repatriation, deportation, and externalization expands a structural grammar that was shaped by the political objective in recent decades of integrating immigrants and refugees, in conjunction with nationalist identity politics that perform ongoing assessments of which individuals and groups are believed to belong in Denmark—and which are not.
The result is a current grammar in which the displaced relationship between the ethnos and the demos casts refugees and immigrants as exogenous “others” who disrupt the image of national harmony and the vision of the ordered welfare society. For years, immigrants and refugees have had to endure being singled out as a problem and—via a diffuse and never-ending process called “integration”—striving to be recognized as part of society. Today, however, due to the paradigm shift and the dominant new realism in Danish politics, there is broad consensus that returns, in the form of (to a varying extent) voluntary repatriation or actual deportations, should increasingly be part of the future solution.
This article began with Gerd Baumann (2004) extracting three grammars of identity from the major works Orientalism (Said [1978] 2003), The Nuer (Evans- Pritchard 1940), and Homo Hierarchicus (Dumont 1980), which are, respectively, about an antagonistic dichotomy, a segmentary principle, and hierarchical subordination and encompassment. These were fundamentally different ways of dealing with the relation between the self and the “other” in the ethnographic archive. Baumann demonstrated that different grammars have evolved in different parts of the world over time, delineating specific relationships between majorities and minorities, the self and the “other.” The three grammars could also be used to qualify aspects of the Danish case in particular.
First, Danish conceptions of refugees and immigrants are influenced by the antagonistic dichotomy that for centuries has shaped the European attitude to the Orient and contributed to creating the idea of “us” vs “them.” Second, the segmentary principle is recognizable in the way in which we all contain a range of coexisting identity categories: one person can be a “refugee,” “student,” “woman,” “fiancée,” “from Kabul,” “from Copenhagen,” “Muslim,” or “painter” all at the same time. However, such a range of identity categories indicates a diversity and variety that conflicts with the narrative of the monocultural, homogenous population. Consequently, the many categories of identity become secondary in regard to the current identity politics, which—as illustrated in this article—focus on demarcating what is specifically Danish and on being Danish in the correct manner. Finally, a continuing hierarchical subordination is taking place, whereby refugees and immigrants must accept and conform to the values of the majority population. This is, for instance, the case when refugees and immigrants with foreign-sounding names are disregarded in connection with job applications or waiting lists for rental flats—or when they are confronted with racism in the media (Hervik 2011), the welfare system (Padovan-Özdemir and Øland 2022), and at educational institutions (Khawaja and Lagermann 2023), and when they faced as much during the COVID-19 pandemic (Rytter 2023). However, because such discriminatory practice is not consistent with the Danish value of egalitarianism, it is often ignored or downplayed.
Overall, we can use Baumann's three grammars to discuss the particular Danish situation, but they cannot account for the whole picture. This article has therefore endeavored to outline a fourth structural grammar of identity that has evolved over recent decades (see Fig. 3) and defined the strategy of the Danish nation-state and welfare society for positioning and handling refugees and immigrants.
In the final chapter of their anthology, Baumann and Gingrich (2004b: 196) discuss the lurking possibility of a grammar of identity turning into what they call an “anti-grammar.” In an ordinary grammar, the notions of identity and alterity are mutually constitutive; anti-grammar is when the constellation of selfings/otherings not only aims to annihilate the “other,” but also to compulsorily abolish the former self. Historical examples of anti-grammars are found in Nazi-occupied Europe, in the war in the former Yugoslavia or during the genocide in Rwanda—in all three cases, the grammatical otherings that used to operate in routine and taken-for-granted ways turned into an anti-grammar that explicitly mobilized people for manifest physical violence directed against whole categories of people (e.g., Jews, Bosnian Muslims, and Tutsies) who had to be systematically excluded or annihilated in their entirety. I am not suggesting here that the current grammar of identity will lead to such extreme outcomes, but we have to consider the gloomy potential of the Danish identity grammar turning into an anti-grammar, as it does promote a nostalgic image of a pure nation and an ordered welfare society. The influx of refugees, immigrants, and those granted family reunification over the last 50 years is believed to have created an imbalance between the ethnos and the demos; hence, these people are presented as exogenous “others” and matter out of place (Douglas 1966) who threaten the existing national order—a threat that is continually addressed symbolically and acted upon very concretely through state strategies of “integration”, deportation, and externalization.
The Danish grammar of identity also shares some qualities of an anti- grammar, as it—hopefully only in theory—eventually will have been in effect for so long that there are no longer any exogenous “others” to deport or externalize. Whereas Said, Evans-Pritchard, and Dumont presented grammars of identity that organized and reorganized social relations in a delimited dynamic cultural system designed to cope with otherness, the current Danish grammar paradoxically implies its own resolution. According to Said, the idea of the Orient is complementary to the historical constitution of European identity. In Evans-Prichard's description, the Nuer creatively reorganizes lines of affiliation depending on a given dispute, conflict, or feud; and Dumont emphasizes how even castes, which are seen as low and polluting, are subordinated and included in the overall hierarchical system. On the contrary, in the current Danish grammar otherness is handled by through expulsion and being externalized from the system. It is an open question as to what kind of identity and constructions of national selves will evolve after the annihilation of all the “others.”
This article has focused exclusively on Denmark, but much similar grammars can probably be identified in other European countries. Future research should not only focus on the similarities, but also try to grasp and discuss the subtle differences and variations between identity grammars directed toward refugees and immigrants. Just as the widespread emic term “integration” is understood differently in the United Kingdom, France, and Denmark owing to differences in the three countries’ political systems, colonial histories, and welfare societies (cf. Rytter 2019: 691), so too will identity grammars have similarities but still differ in significant ways depending on the country or region. In this respect, the current European “return turn” may motivate further interrogations of identity grammars in a number of countries that, like Denmark, relentlessly cast certain groups as exogenous “others” to be repatriated, deported, or externalized.
Future research should also explore how grammars of identity, despite being held in common and taken for granted, still tend to differentiate between different groups of refugees and immigrants. This became clear after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The almost 40,000 displaced Ukrainians who currently live in Denmark were from the beginning embraced by the local population and met with special legislation to ease their stay and give access to all levels of the labor market and welfare society. Paradoxically, the warm welcome for the Ukrainians is based on and reinforces the identity grammar, as they were presented in the public debate as “Europeans,” “white,” “Christians,” and “eager to work for a living”—all characteristics that contrast with the stereotypes of refugees and immigrants already living in Denmark, who often come from countries outside Europe, have a darker skin complexion than the average Dane, identify as Muslim, and are often presented in the national media and national politics as welfare scroungers.19 In this respect, the arrival of Ukrainians has strengthened the grammar and emphasized, to paraphrase George Orwell, how apparently some “others” are more “other” than others.
Finally, the paradigm shift, the new realism and the state's willingness to revoke protection for different groups of refugees have placed Denmark internationally in the position of “frontrunner” or “outlier” (Tan 2021: 22), depending on one's view of the refugee issue. No matter what, it is a central contention of this article that the paradigm shift is not something relevant only to refugees; it is relevant to everyone living in Denmark. The article illustrates how the identity grammar simultaneously reflects, legitimizes, and expands concrete narratives and ideas about the Danish welfare society, the nation, and the population, and thereby contributes to conceptions and discussions of the relationship between majorities and minorities, Danes and “others,” and “us” and “them” in new ways.
Acknowledgements
An early version of this article was presented at the seminar “Paradigmeskiftets konsekvenser,” 8–9 December 2021, hosted by MIAU – Centre for Migration and Integration Research, Aarhus University. A later version was presented at the 25th anniversary seminar at IMER in Bergen, Norway, 3–4 November 2022. I thank the participants at these events for many comments and questions that helped me strengthen the final version. I also thank my colleagues Karen Fog Olwig, Mikkel Thorup, Zachary Whyte, Sarah-Louise J. Mortensen, Martin Bak Jørgensen, Jens Vedsted-Hansen, Jessica Schultz, and Susanne Bregnbæk for reading and commenting on earlier versions of the article. I am grateful for the comments I received from the anonymous Social Analysis reviewers and from the journal editor Martin Holbraad. This article was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council (grant no. 303529).
Notes
https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/mette-frederiksen-maalet-er-nul-asylansoegere-til-danmark (accessed 10 April 2024).
Denmark and Hungary, for instance, were the only two countries in 2021 to deem the situation in Syria stable and peaceful enough to start returning Syrian refugees.
The term integration is consequently presented as “integration,” because it is an emic term that the majority population use when they discuss political interventions and adjustments in the everyday life of the minority population (see Rytter 2019).
The article is part of the international comparative research project “Temporary Protection as a Durable Solution: The ‘Return Turn’ in Asylum Politics in Europe” (TemPro), which explores how Afghan, Syrian, and Somalian refugees live under temporary protection in Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Denmark. The project is funded by the Nordic Research Council (no. 303529) and is a collaboration between the Christian Michelsen Institute, the University of Bergen, Coventry University, and Aarhus University. See https://www.cmi.no/projects/2506-temporary-protection (accessed 10 April 2024).
The analysis also builds on my previous ethnographic research and engagement with issues related to Muslim immigrants and refugees in Denmark over the last two decades (see Olwig et al. 2012; Rytter 2013, 2018, 2019, 2023; Rytter et al. 2023; Rytter and Ghandchi 2020; Rytter and Pedersen 2014).
In his comparison of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Australia, Bruce Kapferer (1988) asserts that the understandings of the self and the “other” in these two places exist at an ontological level. They are not necessarily articulated as a comprehensive theory but, nonetheless, are motivating forces at all levels of these societies and their populations.
Forms of national exceptionalism are also, for instance, when Danes pride themselves on their high ranking on the annual international “trust index” or “happiness index,” or when a particular kind of samfundssind (“civic consciousness”/“community spirit”) was repeatedly emphasized as a unique quality of the population in the battle against COVID-19 (Rytter 2023).
https://jyllands-posten.dk/kultur/ECE4769343/Dokumentation-Kulturminister-Brian-Mikkelsens-tale/ (accessed 10 April 2024).
The ten selected Danish values were: Christian cultural heritage, the Danish language, voluntarism in civil society, freedom, liberal-mindedness (frisind), hygge (“cosiness”), gender equality, equal justice, trust, and the welfare society.
https://www.altinget.dk/by/navnenyt/danmarks-videnscenter-for-integration-lukker (accessed 10 April 2024).
Exceptions are the two left-wing parties Enhedslisten and Alternativet, and Radikale on the center-left. These parties currently represent less than 15 per cent of the national voters.
The narrative of failed “integration” lingers despite counternarratives that point out many parameters in connection with education, work, or birthrate, which point to refugees and immigrants adopting the norms and values of the welfare state (see Borberg 2019).
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/karen-jespersen-red-stormen-af (ac- cessed 10 April 2024).
https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/dansk-folkeparti-vil-udvise-kriminelle-udlaendinge-til-groenland (accessed 10 April 2024).
The political party Stram Kurs received 1.8 per cent of the national vote in the 2019 election. Denmark requires 2 per cent to gain seats in Parliament.
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/s-vil-samle-flygtninge-i-lejre-i-naeromraderne (accessed 10 April 2024).
The British government linked development aid and plans of establishing camps outside Europe in the bilateral negotiations. According to media sources, 140 million pounds were to be transferred to the Kigame-regime as part of the Rwanda Asylum Plan. The trend of linking development aid and deportation agreements has been coined a “development-deportation nexus” (Rytter and Ghandchi 2020: 191).
https://via.ritzau.dk/pressemeddelelse/udenrigsministeriet-etablerer-projektkontor-i-rwanda?publisherId=2012662&releaseId=13657036 (accessed 10 April 2024).
The different framing of the replaced Ukrainians in contrast to asylum seekers and refugees has also been discussed and problematized in the public debate.
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