The Discourse of Danish Immigration Policy from the 1970s to the Present Day

The purpose of my PhD project is to display traits of continuity or change in discourse in political (parliamentary) discourse on immigrants from the 1960s to 2002. This will be done by describing, interpreting and explaining the way the Danish parliamentary debate on immigrants are organised, which discourses that are drawn upon and, ultimately, analyse the discursive implications on politics. The intention is, furthermore, to set the Danish discourse on immigration policies in an international and global perspective in order to establish if the discourse on immigration in Denmark is a discrete phenomenon or if there is a tendency to treat the issue in comparable ways in other countries. Concretely changes in Danish and Swedish political discourses on immigration will be compared in order to establish why two countries that to a large extent have a similar culture and socio-political tradition have tackled the immigration issue differently. PhD project.