Paper short abstract:

In Denmark the placement of asylum centers in rural areas affects local communities demographically and economically and reshapes their collective lives and self-understandings, as they look for pragmatic ways forward from a local crisis to which asylum seekers are perceived a solution, not a cause

Paper long abstract:

Asylum centers in rural areas are an increasingly common mode of managing asylum seekers in Denmark. The centers' rural location is significant for asylum seekers, but they also can have important consequences for the local communities in which they are placed. In a context of increased depopulation of the Danish countryside, the growing arrival of asylum seekers and the various jobs deriving from their presence significantly affect local communities, both financially and socially. Based on an ethnographic study at three separate rural sites, the paper examines the consequences and meanings of asylum centers for Danish rural communities, with a particular view to the local pragmatism that these consequences/meanings are simultaneously shaped from and producing. While civil society mobilization and volunteerism may foster increased contact and neighborliness between locals and asylum seekers, at times local inhabitants may as well respond by practices of rejection/separation. Thus while co-existence in the harmonious sense between Danes and asylum seekers is not always given, the physical presence of asylum centers (re)shapes the social lives and self-understandings of local rural communities notwithstanding, as they look for pragmatic, rather than ideological, ways forward from their situation of demographic and economic crisis. In contrast with the national level of dispute, in many instances, this pragmatic outlook means that locally, regardless of political stance, the placement and presence of asylum seekers comes to be seen as part of a solution to this crisis, not a reason behind it. Co-researchers: Zachary Whyte and Karen Fog Olwig, UCPH