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This special issue focusses on how migration and diversity researchers experience and perform their role as academic experts in politicised public debates about migration and diversity. In a world wherein experts are increasingly demanded for policy development and wherein migration as well as ethnic, racial and religious diversity are among the themes dividing voters the most, migration and diversity researchers find themselves in a challenging position. How do they view their obligation to participate in public debate and how does their identities as researchers relate to such participation? This special issue will discuss the impact and implications of these challenges in the Scandinavian context, although the theme of researchers’ roles in politicised public debate is of a broader relevance both to other geographical regions and to other controversial research fields. Debates on public sociology, on the science/media interface, and on present challenges to academic expertise more generally, are central to the discussion.

Theoretically, this article investigates the politicisation of migration research in relation to boundary work between different spheres of the Danish public debate about migration, including resea...

Denmark is an example of a country where the idea of historical ethnic homogeneity stands strong. This article challenges this historical presentism: the scholarly and societal tendency to understand social phenomena within a limited contemporary framework, neglecting possible effects and similarities embedded in and established through human history. This will be done via an historical and ethnographic study of the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Norrebro. The article underlines the ethnic heterogeneity of Danish history and further shows how combining historical and ethnographic methods in studying a neighbourhood can grant us important insights into the changing incorporation of immigrant groups and the changing meanings of ‘the immigrant’.

This special issue focuses on ‘ways of seeing’ the city and raise questions about current dominant epistemological frameworks for understanding the urban-based sociabilities of people whom policy-makers and researchers frequently speak about as foreign, diverse and requiring integration. Read together, the articles contribute to an emerging relational social science by approaching urban sociabilities through four interrelated parameters: (1) a concept of place-making situated within trajectories of differential and multiscalar power; (2) a discursive analysis of narratives and silences, including those about diversity and cultural difference, formulated by actors within different scales of power; (3) an analysis of how different temporalities make visible or invisible the presence, agency and interconnection of various actors engaged in city-making; and (4) a re-engagement with the notion of ‘the social’, so that diversity, variation, mobility and conflict are seen as aspects of all urban social life, and...

This article responds to the need for a cautious use of the concepts of diversity and social cohesion in migration research. Presently missing in the literature is a historicisation and contextualisation of these concepts that can highlight the heterogeneity of diversity. In our investigation of the cities and neighbourhoods in which migrants settle and how migrants affect these neighbourhoods, it is important to ask whether the diversity of today is significantly different from the diversity a hundred years ago. To provide the missing perspectives, I offer a situated historical analysis of empirical data and ethnographic fieldwork in Norrebro, a neighbourhood of the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Situating the contemporary heterogeneous characteristics of cities and neighbourhoods within a local history of diversity is useful for our understanding of past and contemporary social solidarities that underlie the perceptions of ‘otherness’ and the changing implications of the focus on immigrant identity.

Between 2002 and 2003, Denmark introduced further limitations on its already restrictive regulations concerning family and marriage reunification. While several studies, both Danish and international, have discussed the effects of these and other family reunification laws on individual practice, we know very little about the their effects on people's self-perceptions and norms. Based on a qualitative data set, including a total of 89 interviews with young people of immigrant background living in Denmark collected between 1999 and 2009, this article seeks to provide answers to this and related questions. As a social technology, do the regulations create changes in the practice field of the respondents which they gradually come to see as natural and reasonable, or do they leave them in a troubling subject position (Staunaes, 2005) based on a socially and legislatively regulated stigma?

Migration research often fosters political awareness and polemics. In the instances where a politically based critique of research results evolves, the critique is often directed toward the researcher(s) who carried out the project. Can the researcher be trusted? Or, is he or she simply an agent with political intentions, disguised as research? The personal consequences for the researcher and his/her options for speaking out in such contexts are surprisingly undescribed—not least within academic, methodological publications.

A prominent strand within current migration research argues that, to understand the participation of immigrants in their host societies, we must focus on their incorporation into the cities in which they settle. This article narrows the perspective further by focusing on the role that immigrants play within one particular neighbourhood: Nørrebro in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. The article introduces the concept of grounded politics to analyse how groups of Muslim immigrants in Nørrebro use the space, relationships and history of the neighbourhood for identity political statements. The article further describes how national political debates over the Muslim presence in Denmark affect identity political manifestations within Nørrebro. By using Duncan Bell’s concept of mythscape (Bell, 2003), the article shows how some political actors idealize Nørrebro’s past to contest the present ethnic and religious diversity of the neighbourhood and, further, to frame what they see as the deterioration of genuine Danish identity.

Within Western nation-states such as Denmark, Islamic identities are often seen as inherently and divergently visible, an aspect that some argue is detrimental to the secular nation-state. From a research perspective, one way to nuance this position is by focusing on groups of ‘invisible’ Muslims. Another path, which I pursue here, is to situate the activism of Muslims in the historical fabric of the neighbourhood(s) in which they live, in this case the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Norrebro. Given that Muslims and others use Norrebro as they do, this neighbourhood has become a prominent example of the effects of multiculturalism in larger national debates, a situation affecting research engagement with the community. In the last part of my article I describe my dialogical approaches for engaging with the community, thus situating the article within wider discussions of research self-reflexivity and critical ethnography (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Madison 2005).

In Denmark, the practice of transnational arranged marriages among immigrants has stirred debate on several levels of society. One effect of the debate is a tightened regulation of family formation migration, seen as an effective means both of limiting the number of immigrants and of furthering processes of social integration. Within media-based and political debates, transnational marriages are frequently described as practices destructive both to individual freedom and to Danish national identity. Nonetheless, it is a practice in which both minority and majority citizens engage, one that frames both their family lives and their lives as citizens. This article analyses the dynamic relationship between public discourse and practices of transnational marriage. The first part describes how political and legislative perceptions of transnational (arranged) marriages are situated within a discussion of ‘Danishness’. The second part describes how second-generation immigrants from Turkey and Pakistan, all of who...

This paper aims to explore aspects of transnational identity formation among young Muslims in three Western countries, Denmark, Sweden and the United States. The thesis is that, on the one hand, such transnational identity formations are indeed taking place, and, on the other, they are continuously effected by aspects of the local and the contextual, and in particular by the conditions and legislation of the host nation‐state. The process of transnational identity formation is described according to four overall conditions and themes: (1) visibility and aesthetics; (2) choice; (3) transnationalism; and (4) social ethics. These themes play significant roles on an overall transnational level, but are continuously ‘localized’, formulated and lived according to the context in which Muslims actually live. In the concluding section, the article discusses the implications of the dynamic field of transnational/national Muslim identity formations for the definition of a Muslim diaspora, and raises the question of ...

L'a. presente les resultats d'une enquete realisee aupres de jeunes musulmans de la diaspora residant en Suede, au Danemark et aux Etats-Unis. Il etablit que ces jeunes de la deuxieme generation placent l'appartenance religieuse avant leurs origines ethniques. L'A. constate que l'identite religieuse revendiquee permet que se creent des liens entre minorites, transcendant les nationalites d'origine et les appartenances aux pays d'accueil.

Multiculturalism is — as both a descriptive and a normative term — frequently conceptually framed as relating to the policies of the nation-state. This chapter focuses on aspects of multiculturalism in Denmark, a relatively small Scandinavian country. It looks at past and present implications of multiculturalism, and, further, includes a dynamic perspective on state and municipal understandings of multiculturalism. Denmark can, on a state level, be seen as a strong opponent to multiculturalism, but such views are highly contrasted by local policies, most notably within the capital of Copenhagen. As with other ‘world cities’ (Massey 2007), Copenhagen’s city administration seeks to attract highly skilled labour, capital and tourists through the marketing of ethnic diversity. Ethnic and other aspects of social diversity are celebrated in the central squares of Copenhagen and stand at the centre of the city’s integration policies, particularly as a means to access the resources of its citizens and to prevent ethnic tensions. The second part of the chapter discusses these dimensions of Copenhagen’s multiculturalist policies, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norrebro, one of the city’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. As such, the chapter calls for a multilayered social analysis of policies and practices (in this case, state and municipality) to understand multiculturalism as policy and conviviality (Gilroy 2004).

As Islam and Muslims have become a centre of attention for political discussions, knowledge on Islam and Muslims are increasingly tool for political decision-making. As a consequence, Islamic studies scholars navigate in a highly politicised field when communicating their results; they are frequently positioned as political actors and research results as ideological statements.A central question for researchers within the current debate climate is whether Islamic studies research in Europe and North America is forced into a defensive position by political agendas? How is the current situation contributing to the ongoing formation of academic self-perception and research ideals?Within the public debate, scholars on Islam and Muslims are often described as naively portraying Muslims as victims of Western domination. Hereby, the argument goes, re-searchers disregard potential links between radicalisation, Islam and terrorism. This critique is worth scrutiny and scholarly self reflection, not least to strengthen the methodological and theoretical starting points for further research. Have our scholarly approaches (methodological, theoretical and philosophical) as a consequence that we avoid certain research topics and stress others overtly? Can we communicate our research results to the public without being positioned as part of a specific political agenda? And how can we fulfill our obligation to publicly disseminate sensitive research results and while maintaining access to the empirical field?This special issue of the Journal for the Scientific study of Islam (Tidsskrift for Islam-forskning) includes three articles wtitten by Garbi Schmidt,Christine M. Jacobsen and Thomas Hoffmann. Peter P. Mandaville, co-director of the Center for Global Studies at George Mason’s University, U.S.A. has written the introduction. The three articles are all based on presentations made by the authors at an international seminar hosted by FIFO on May 14th and 15th 2007.As always, the Journal for the Scientific study of Islam also includes a number of book reviews, this time of Christer Hedins Ali Shariatis befrielseteologi. Västerländske inslag i shiitisk revolutionär islam and Philip Halldéns Jihad-orienterad salafism på internet.We hope you will enjoy this special issue of the Journal for the Scientific study of Islam.

This thesis aims to investigate some of the practical implications of the apparent dichotomy between the conceptions of institution and home found within eldercare in Denmark. The research is based on a case study of a well-managed public nursing home in Copenhagen. It focuses, on the one hand, upon the power relations that take place between the nursing staff and the residents as well as other typical features of institutional practices. On the other hand, the analysis explores how the residents experience the possibility to create their home and the feeling of being home within the institution. Theoretically the thesis approaches home as a phenomenological domain while institution is seen as a sociological phenomenon with emphasis placed upon the way human relations and institutional practices affect residents’ everyday life. This is then used to analyse the qualitative data acquired through one and a half months of participant observation in the nursing home Rundskuedagens Plejecenter. The study concludes that home and institution should not conceptually be seen as an antitheses but, on the other hand, should be considered as complementary to each other. Homes, on the one hand, can have characteristics which are normally perceived as typical of institutional settings. Institutional practices on the other hand can support residents in the process of transforming the apartments within the institution, into their own homes.