In 2022, the Danish parliament passed new legislation with the purpose of allowing for a system that could provide education for Ukrainian refugee children and youth to continue their schooling Denmark in a manner that would offer them the optimal opportunities upon their supposedly rapid return to Ukraine. This paper presents a characterization of the model for reception education prescribed in the Danish special legislation. In Denmark, municipalities can adjust the national reception policy into local reception models, thus there is local variation in the organization of reception across the Danish municipalities (Skiveren et al., 2024). We investigate how the legislation and possible reception models were perceived by agents on different levels of municipal administration and school practice, from administrators in municipalities, to managers on schools, to teachers and children and youth. The theoretical framework combines a conceptualization of purposes of refugee education by Dryden-Peterson et al. (2019) with critical approaches to (post)migration (Römhild, 2017) and integration (Rytter, 2019). The empirical basis of the paper is generated during field work in two municipalities in Denmark during the school year of 2022-2023 by the authors together with other members of an interdisciplinary research group. The empirical material consists of field notes of everyday activities at the school both in formal and informal educational settings and interviews with municipality representatives, school management, teachers, children and youth. The paper contributes with knowledge on how different actors at the local levels contribute to developing and negotiating reception models at the local levels (Skiveren et al., 2024). Furthermore, it contributes to the growing body of literature on how European school systems have handled the influx of children and youth from Ukraine (see e.g. Karbowniczek et al., 2022; Parmigiani et al., 2023). It demonstrates how the purpose of education of Ukrainian children and youth was subject to negotiation and tension when observed on different levels leading to a dispersed refugee educational model, from the level of legislation, via the level of municipality and school management to the level of everyday school practices. Also, the paper interprets the seemingly contradictory responses on the different levels considering widespread, often paradoxical notions of integration (Rytter, 2019) and migration in the Danish society and political system. The findings of the paper feeds into a broader discussion regarding the organization and pedagogical development of reception education in Europe (Koehler et al., 2022; Norozi & Moen, 2022; Thomas et al., 2022).

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