Paper short abstract:

Drawing on policy documents and interviews with high school leaders in Denmark, the paper explores the fear and concern reflected within and generated by educational dispersal policies related to racialized minoritized students in Danish high schools via the notion of racialized nationalist affect.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore the fear and anxiety reflected within and generated by educational dispersal and tipping point policies related to racialized minoritized students in Danish high schools via the notion of racialized nationalist affect. We have developed the notion of racialized nationalist affect to capture how ideas of education and integration are bound up with racialized notions of the nation (where Danishness most often is equal to a white majoritized position) whilst utilizing and reinforcing affective strategies of fear, anxiety and concern in response to a perceived threat of diversity that needs to be controlled through efforts of integration. Drawing on existing policy documents related to student dispersal plans and interviews with high school leaders in Denmark, we will critically analyse how the high school, the nation, and the ethnic minoritized students are affectively and discursively produced, perceived, and disciplined. The paper explores the question of how high schools are discursively produced as sites of integration through racialized nationalist affective policies and practices - most notably seen in discourses on student dispersal and the balancing of the ”tipping point”, and how they connect to discourses on nationalism and integration that seemingly position racialized minoritized students as ‘perpetually arriving’ and hence as a risk factor to the overall social cohesiveness of the Danish high school.