Fostering Racially Minoritized Student Participation in Danish Education through Friendship Pedagogies (1970s-Present)

Friendship relations between students of different ‘cultural’ and national backgrounds have been a focus of educational strategies in Danish school contexts since labor migration began in 1960s’
(Moldenhawer & Øland, 2013). Examples of such strategies have included school redistribution and referral projects that transfer students from schools with a high concentration of students with foreign backgrounds to school districts with a high concentration of white Danish students, specific quotas for students with foreign backgrounds in schools, and the establishment of friendship exchange classes. This article explores how friendship relations have been understood and used in approaches to the participation of racially minoritized students in Danish schools from the 1970s until the present day.