Between integration and repatriation – frontline experiences of how conflicting immigrant integration policies hamper the integration of young refugees in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Confronted with global migration pressures, European countries face the dual challenges of border control and the incorporation of immigrants into society. Danish immigration and integration policies aim to restrict the influx of refugees and to develop newcomers’ sense of civic responsibility. We analyse 2017 policy problematisations and local integration policy workers’ experiences with integrating young, newly arrived refugees under the mandatory municipal integration programme. We find that these policies lead to paradoxical effects when integration goals interact with immigration laws that create precarious temporary living conditions. Moreover, when integration is problematised as an exclusive problem of refugees’ employability and prompt economic self-sufficiency. The policy problematisations neglect the needs of young refugees by overlooking critical aspects of social and cultural integration and obscuring the possibilities for individually tailored services, which, from frontline integration workers’ perspective, are necessary to realise young refugees’ integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant integration policy
• young refugees
• frontline work
• problematisations
• Denmark

Acknowledgements

We thank the Danish Research Council for funding the project ‘Junctures of Change in the Integration of Young Refugees’, of which the data material for this article is part. We also thank our project colleagues, Associate Professor Morten Skovdal (Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen) and PhD fellow Louise Buhl Andersen (Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University), for their important contributions through discussion of data and analysis. Finally, we are grateful to our colleagues at the Department of Sociology and Social Work and at MESU (Danish Research Centre of Migration, Ethnicity and Health, University of Copenhagen) for their invaluable and critical comments on early and later manuscript drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Det Frie Forskningsråd: [Grant Number DFF - 7015-00023].