Michelle Pace's "Un-welcome to Denmark"

Michelle Pace is Professor in Global Studies based in Roskilde, Denmark.

Her new book is Un-welcome to Denmark: The paradigm shift and refugee integration.

Pace applied the “Page 99 Test” to Un-welcome to Denmark and reported the following:

Page 99 is the start of chapter 5 entitled "Tracing legislative intent in the Danish Aliens Act from 1983 to 2019."

Here is the text in whole:

5

Tracing legislative intent in the

Danish Aliens Act from 1983 to 2019

Introduction

[F]rom now on it must be clear that Denmark only accepts foreigners who adopt and respect Danish values, norms, and traditions, while all the others may well stay away. My approach is that when people choose to come to Denmark, and want to become citizens, it is of course because they want to become Danish, not because they want to change Denmark. In my view it is the multicultural that makes it all crack. Contrary to opposition parties, I do not see the great value in the multicultural society.

(Søren Pind, minister for refugees, immigrants, and integration, 2011)
(as quoted in Adamo, 2012: 2)

Throughout Denmark's recent history, immigration debates have changed quite drastically. From discussions on how best to ensure equal rights for guest workers during the 1960s and 1970s, to the anti-multiculturalism narratives outlined in the above quote from 2011 (see also Kivisto and Wahlbeck, 2013; Lægaard, 2013), immigration has undoubtedly contributed to various challenges for Danish policy-makers and society at large.

While political opinions may differ, to an extent, across the political spectrum and across various Danish communities, more recent debates have raised pertinent questions:

How many immigrants can the country absorb? Which kind of refugee is Denmark obliged to receive according to UN declarations? Should immigrants and refugees have access to education, health care, and the labor market, and if so, how soon? Is it better to 'assist' refugees and immigrants in distant 'safe zones' (so that they do not appear at the Danish border)? How about placing the unwanted immigrants on an isolated island to incentivize them to go back home? (Villadsen, 2021: 137)

Danish political parties all admit to the well-known fact that Denmark has one of the strictest immigration laws in Europe (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Scott Ford, 2022; Khalid and Mortensen, 2019; Kreichauf, 2020;

Page 99 will enable readers to get a strong sense of the core argument and conceptual framing of this book, but not a balanced sense of the whole work.

What page 99 communicates well, starting at Chapter 5, with the above Søren Pind quotation, immediately signals several central features of the book, namely that: Danish immigration and asylum policy is imbued with the language of 'values', 'identity', and 'cultural conformity'. This in and of itself aligns very well with my book’s title and core argument. Moreover, by framing this chapter as “Tracing legislative intent,” this page highlights the analytical approach of the book: the Aliens Act has been critically read and analysed in light of political ideology, discursive practices, and stated goals. Readers can therefore immediately understand that this book interrogates state power, integration rhetoric, and the challenges with/rejection of multiculturalism. The Danish case is also situated within a longer historical trajectory (1983– 2019), giving the book's analysis depth, continuity, and longitudinal weight. Browsers reading this page will thereby be able to conclude and appreciate that this is a serious, critical study of how Danish asylum and refugee law evolved into an exclusionary, assimilationist regime. This I believe is a fair description of the book’s intellectual project.

However, opening the book on page 99 would miss several important dimensions of the whole work, including its rich background, contextual and empirical groundwork. This contains a nuanced historical-social-policy-integration-methodological and conceptual analysis, none of which is visible here. A browser might therefore underestimate how evidence-driven the book is as well as its analytical scaffolding. Core concepts, definitions, and methodological choices developed earlier (e.g. how I define “integration,” “paradigm shift,” or “welcome/unwelcome”) are assumed rather than introduced. Browsers may also miss important nuances and/or inherent tensions. Beginning with a ministerial quote foregrounds ideology. Browsers may not appreciate how carefully I distinguish between rhetoric, law, implementation, and lived experiences of those targeted by state policies as well as those tasked with assisting and supporting them.

In conclusion, as a snapshot of the book’s core argument and stakes, page 99 does a very good job. As a representation of the book’s full scope, method, and evidence: it gives browsers a partial appreciation of the often-overlooked debate on racism and xenophobia in Denmark's immigration and integration policies, in particular in relation to the forensic investigation of the tensions, illogicalities and injustices in Denmark's racist, illiberal, exclusionary and assimilationist policies towards asylum-seekers and refugees.

Learn more about Un-welcome to Denmark at the Manchester University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue