On 26th of September we are lucky to have Marta Padovan-Özdemir visiting our department to give a seminar about racism in Danish welfare work with refugees. The seminar will be held in Danish, but with the possibility of continuing the conversation after Marta and Trine’s talk in both Danish and English. We hope to see many of our wonderful colleagues and students at this great event!

Marta will talk about the new book she has written together with Trine Øland, Associate Professor in Educational Research: Racism in Danish Welfare work with refugees: Troubled by difference, docility, and dignity (2022) and afterwards the research group FLIGHT will lead an informal Q+A.

If you want to prepare: we recommend reading chapter 1 + 8, but it is also possible to attend without having read.

Abstract: 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. Focusing on super- and subordination in helping relations of post-coloniality, 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.

Marta Padovan-Özdemir, PhD, is Associate Professor in social change at the Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University and former Senior Associate Professor at the Research centre for management, organisation and society and former head of the Research program for society and diversity, VIA University College. Her research revolves around diversity management in welfare work and how structures of inequality play out in well-meaning interventions.