{"title":"Displacing the other to unite the nation: The parallel society legislation in Denmark","authors":"Martin Lundsteen","doi":"10.1177/09697764231165202","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In 2018, the then right-wing government in Denmark led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen and supported by the extreme right-wing party Danish People’s Party presented new legislation to end ‘parallel societies’ in Denmark by toughening the criminal law, enforcing Danish knowledge and nursery school assistance to toddlers, and, more importantly for this article, a series of urban interventions in ‘ghetto areas’ considered as such mainly when the proportion of immigrants and descendants from non-Western countries exceeded 50 per cent. Until recently research has focused on either the discursive elements of the ‘ghetto politics’ in Denmark or the urban interventions from an architectural or urban planning point of view. However, newfangled research deal with the entwined economic elements. In this article, I compare the different developmental plans proposed in the affected areas because of the legislation, with an aim to reach further and point at the inherent elements of urban b/ordering, that is, measures taken to attain social order and gain legitimacy by demarcating categories of people to incorporate some and exclude others through urban space. Indeed, through this comparison, I conclude that the ghetto legislation is a compelling example of the urban b/ordering inherent to the politics and dynamics of current liberal capitalist social democracies. It is a social experiment that remodels the geography of Denmark in terms that recall the eugenic and hygienic social and urban policies of the 19th century and form part of a worrying pattern that may have consequences that go beyond the stated ones.","PeriodicalId":47746,"journal":{"name":"European Urban and Regional Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":"261 - 281"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Urban and Regional Studies","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764231165202","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
In 2018, the then right-wing government in Denmark led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen and supported by the extreme right-wing party Danish People’s Party presented new legislation to end ‘parallel societies’ in Denmark by toughening the criminal law, enforcing Danish knowledge and nursery school assistance to toddlers, and, more importantly for this article, a series of urban interventions in ‘ghetto areas’ considered as such mainly when the proportion of immigrants and descendants from non-Western countries exceeded 50 per cent. Until recently research has focused on either the discursive elements of the ‘ghetto politics’ in Denmark or the urban interventions from an architectural or urban planning point of view. However, newfangled research deal with the entwined economic elements. In this article, I compare the different developmental plans proposed in the affected areas because of the legislation, with an aim to reach further and point at the inherent elements of urban b/ordering, that is, measures taken to attain social order and gain legitimacy by demarcating categories of people to incorporate some and exclude others through urban space. Indeed, through this comparison, I conclude that the ghetto legislation is a compelling example of the urban b/ordering inherent to the politics and dynamics of current liberal capitalist social democracies. It is a social experiment that remodels the geography of Denmark in terms that recall the eugenic and hygienic social and urban policies of the 19th century and form part of a worrying pattern that may have consequences that go beyond the stated ones.
2018年,由拉尔斯·拉斯穆森(Lars Løkke Rasmussen)领导、极右翼政党丹麦人民党(Danish People ' s party)支持的当时的丹麦右翼政府提出了新的立法,通过加强刑法、加强丹麦知识和对幼儿的幼儿园援助,来结束丹麦的“平行社会”,更重要的是,当来自非西方国家的移民和后裔的比例超过50%时,对“贫民窟地区”的一系列城市干预被认为是这样的。直到最近,研究都集中在丹麦“贫民窟政治”的话语元素或从建筑或城市规划的角度进行城市干预。然而,新奇的研究处理了相互交织的经济因素。在这篇文章中,我比较了在受立法影响的地区提出的不同发展计划,目的是进一步深入并指出城市秩序的内在要素,即通过划分人群类别来获得社会秩序和合法性所采取的措施,通过城市空间容纳一些人,排除其他人。事实上,通过这种比较,我得出结论,贫民窟立法是当前自由资本主义社会民主政治和动态中固有的城市秩序的一个令人信服的例子。这是一项重塑丹麦地理的社会实验,让人回想起19世纪的优生和卫生社会和城市政策,并构成了一种令人担忧的模式的一部分,这种模式可能会产生超出上述范围的后果。
期刊介绍:
European Urban and Regional Studies is a highly ranked, peer reviewed international journal. It provides an original contribution to academic and policy debate related to processes of urban and regional development in Europe. It offers a truly European coverage from the Atlantic to the Urals,and from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean. Its aims are to explore the ways in which space makes a difference to the social, economic, political and cultural map of Europe; highlight the connections between theoretical analysis and policy development; and place changes in global context.