Overcoming Bordering Practices Through the Arts: The Case of Young Syrian Refugees and their Danish Counterparts in Denmark

ABSTRACT

During 2014, Denmark received nearly 15,000 asylum seekers, almost twice the number from the previous year as more people fleeing Syria’s war fled to Europe. By 2016, Denmark succeeded in making the country highly unattractive as a destination for refugees fleeing war torn countries. The country introduced a controversial ‘jewellery bill’, placed adverts in a newspaper in Lebanon dissuading refugees from contemplating a trip to Denmark, and cut assistance benefits for refugees by half. These state bordering practices aimed at securing some kind of ‘Danishness’. This article aims at ascribing agency to young Syrian refugees in Denmark, who have experienced these bordering practices and who seek to counter these practices by participating in meaningful social interactions with their Danish counterparts. The empirical focus is an artistic enactment–a weeklong dance workshop that brought these youngsters together as a distinct form of practice that brings about the conditions of possibility for meaningful integration. Conceptually, it draws upon Arendt’s theory of action and notion of ‘plurality’ to frame how such encounters come about.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Andrey Makarychev for inviting her to participate at the Estonia Winter School of February 2016, Virginie Mamadouh and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive engagement with this article. Special thanks to Buthaina Shaheen (for translation support during the interviews conducted for this research), my interviewees and Bent Hansen from Roskilde municipality who facilitated the interviews.

Funding

This work was supported by the Fund for Academic Cooperation and Exchange between Denmark and the Arab World [L-10-2016].

Notes

^1. Own interviews with young Syrian refugees October 2016 – February 2017; see also (Popescu 2017, 1–10). Forum on Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border, for more on the use of digital technologies by refugees.

^2. See, for instance, Brown, 2010 and 2017.

^3. This is not new of course: see Østergaard-Nielsen (2003), 448–454.

^4. Gilbert (2017), 1–10. Forum on Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border.

^5. For more on the potential impact of fieldwork on researcher’s interviewees see Jacobsen and Landau (2003), 185–206.

^6. Abud and Sabir are not the real names of these two Syrian youth I interviewed. This precaution is taken to minimize the risks of harm to my subjects.

^7. Interviews with Abud and Sabir that I conducted on Friday, November 18, 2016 at the Roskilde youth centre at Københavnsvej 106, Roskilde. Abud and Sabir preferred to have the interview in Arabic.

^8. Pallister-Wilkins (2017). Forum on Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border.

^9. This interview and conversation occurred between the three of us, the author as interviewer, and Sabir and Abud as interviewees.

^10. Bent Hansen is a special consultant in the Children and Youth Department at Roskilde Municipality.

^11. Interviews I conducted with Ellen Kilsgaard and Anu Rajala Erkut, November 29, 2016 at Dansehallerne, Copenhagen. Interviews were conducted in English.

^12. Aaben Dans is more than a theater. It is an arts organization that produces performances, organizes touring, engages in teaching, collaborations, festival organization, learning, sharing, co-productions and exchanges. It is located at Musicon in Roskilde.

^13. The interview was carried out by the author with both Ellen and Anu present at the same time. It was more like an open conversation. Hence the long quotation.

^14. Interview I conducted with Asger (not real name, to minimize any risks of harm to subject), Roskilde, September 10, 2016. Asger preferred to speak in Danish so I was assisted by a translator.

^15. J. Rancière, Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics (Continuum 2010) Chapter 10 The Paradoxes of Political Art. Translator S Corcoran, 141.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fund for Academic Cooperation and Exchange between Denmark and the Arab World [L-10-2016].