A Study of Experiences and Resistance to Racialization in Denmark

This is a study of the current and intensive processes of racialization in Denmark and set against a public debate and policies with the proliferation of moral identities in the public sphere, racializing ‘difference’, naturalizing xenophobia, embedded ideas of incompatibility, and deniability of racism. The concept of racialization has so far been mostly used in other historical situations than the Danish, but we believe that racialization can be the new lens through which we can understand the underlying forces, processes and structures in the public Danish culture. By forming a team research project with a professor, a senior researcher, a post-doc and two PhD candidates from anthropology, IMER (International Migration and Ethnic Relations), cultural studies, critical adoption- and gender studies that use thorough ethnographic description as its point of departure, we will conduct five sub-projects in our effort to study Danish racialization. We add a new approach to racialization through the new context for study racialization, but also through a person-centric approach, where “living people” in all their complexity is incorporated. At the same time we also include a study of public circulating narratives about cultural difference and ethno-racial themes and other sources of knowledge and attitudes towards migrants, refugees and descendants in Denmark.