On 26th of September we are lucky to have Marta Padovan Özdemir and Trine Øland 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 and Trine will talk about their new book: 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. Focussing 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 inter- ventions.

Trine Øland, PhD, is Associate Professor in Educational Research, head of the research group The history and sociology of welfare work and head of Section for Education at University of Copenhagen. Her research interests concern the history and sociology of welfare state progressivism and integrationism, and the way power and inequality effects society and what it means to be human.