This book explores contemporary Danish relations of colonial complicity in welfare work with newly arrived refugees (1978-2016) as recursive histories that reveal new shapes and shades of racism.
Focussing on super- and subordination in helping relations of postcoloniality, the book displays the durability of coloniality and the workings of raceless racism in welfare work with refugees. Its main contribution is the excavation of stock stories of colour-blindness, potentialising and compassion, which help welfare workers invest in burying that which keeps haunting welfare work with refugees, i.e., modern ghosts of difference, docility and dignity.
The book dismantles the global myth of the Danish benevolent, universalistic welfare state and it is of interest to every scholar and student, who wants to make inquiries about Danish exceptionalism and the hidden interaction between past and present, the visible and invisible in Danish welfare work with refugees.
Author(s): Marta Padovan-Özdemir, Trine Øland
Series: Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity, 42
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 182
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Race and welfare
2. A post-colonial welfare analytics
3. A brief history of Danish refugee reception–contextualising the source material
4. Sociological history of racism and the methodological intervention of stock stories
5. The stock story of colour-blindness
6. The stock story of potentialising
7. The stock story of compassion
8. From modern ghosts to a racial structure of welfare work
Index
