In Danish policy and public debates, the concept of integration is often related to problematisation and racialisation of immigrants (especially the 'non-Western' which is an official state term). In recent years, Denmark has become known for its increasingly restrictive policies regarding immigration and integration. However, an 'exceptionalist' understanding of the country as a place, where discrimination based on race and ethnicity is virtually non-existent, prevails. Not least school practice is characterised by self-understandings related to colour-blindness and equality. However, such understandings are challenged by restrictive and racialising immigration and integration policies.
This paper addresses the role which policy-makers, via integration, immigration, and education policies, play and can play in everyday lives and well-being of migrant children. On the one hand, Danish education policy aims at integrating and including migrant children through language learning and other inclusion initiatives; on the other hand, integration policies – recently reformulated as repatriating policies – and increasingly restrictive immigration policies challenge inclusion of migrant children.
Drawing on fieldwork data (participant observation and interviews with school staff and students) in six Danish schools (2019-2021), it is discussed how education policies at the school level as well as integration and immigration policies at a societal level affect the lives of children and staff in Danish public schools.
The interviews with principals and teachers (n=33) in the fieldwork schools show how school staff reflect on their work on educating minority children in a societal context of restrictive immigration and integration policies. While colour-blind and democratic strategies seem prominent, explicit anti-racist strategies appear to be less common.
The interviews with children (n=77) point to ontological security, transnationality, and language as important factors for their well-being and feelings of safety and belonging. Especially children's feelings of ontological security appear to be threatened by immigration policies of repatriating refugees, while transnationality and language as inclusion factors mainly are influenced by integration and education policies (valuing speaking Danish as well as "Danish culture") at the expense of transnational and translingual resources in children's lives. The paper contributes to the symposium with a discussion of the research findings' implications for the policy areas of integration, immigration and Education.
