Educating newcomers to the welfare state. Organizational responses to migration 1960s-2010s and their influence on Danish central policy

Upon arrival to Denmark, migrants first encounter the Danish welfare state when starting language instruction, being accommodated housing and, for refugees, when being received in asylum centers. Frontline organizations that operate these tasks are crucial mediators of welfare state politics directed towards migrants. The NGOs organizing language schools, social housing and asylum reception have thus played a key role as educators of migrants on what becoming part of the Danish welfare state means. We lack knowledge concerning how educational integration practices in frontline organizations have developed and influenced central policy. By means of an interdisciplinary research design combining education science, welfare state history and political science the project explores how frontline organizations from the late 1960s to the 2010s have practiced the task of educating immigrants for their lives in Denmark, and how these practices have influenced and possibly changed central policy.