Garbi Schmidt

Envisioning place: urban sociabilities within time, space and multiscalar power

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 not exclusively an attribute of ‘the other’.

‘Grounded’ politics: Manifesting Muslim identity as a political factor and localized identity in Copenhagen

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.

Understanding and Approaching Muslim Visibilities: Lessons Learned from a Fieldwork-based Study of Muslims in Copenhagen

Abstract 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 Nørrebro. Given that Muslims and others use Nørrebro 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).

Space, politics and past–present diversities in a Copenhagen neighbourhood

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 Nørrebro, 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.

Migration and Marriage

Migration and Marriage

‘Let’s Get Together’: Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Local Implications in Denmark

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).

The Powerful Map of Transnational Families

The Powerful Map of Transnational Families Transnational families are, as the term suggests, social structures existing across national borders. Thus, individuals belonging to these families are in geographical terms separated by space. However, the practices of transnational families often provide a sense of proximity and emotional attachment. This article, by seeing space as inherently relational, discusses the fields within which families establish themselves and move transnationally. Transnational family spaces are, for example, arenas where young people meet and where marriages are arranged. This article includes the life and marriage stories of two individuals who have married transnationally, based on their family relationships, and further analyses how these marriages are element in the practices that families engage in to uphold a sense of closeness - an endeavour that is sometimes successful, sometimes not. Finally, the article discusses some elements that challenge the relational spaces that transnational families engage in, particularly the impact of nation states and their regulations.

Going beyond methodological presentism: examples from a Copenhagen neighbourhood 1885–2010

Abstract 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 Nørrebro. 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’.

Doing Research in a Politicized Field and Surviving It: Lessons Learned from the Field of Migration

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.

Møder på Nørrebrosk

Artiklen diskuterer, med afsaet i feltarbejde pa Norrebro som er et af Kobenhavns mest forskelligartede etniske kvarterer, implikationerne af forskellige moder mellem den muslimske minoritet og den ikke-muslimske majoritetsbefolkning. Artiklen viser sadanne moders indflydelse pa det lokale niveau ved at fokusere pa 1) samarbejdet mellem muslimske og sekulaere, kommunale institutioner og 2) identifikationen mellem muslimske/etniske minoritetsunge og kulturelle subkulturer, der begge repraesenterer oppositionsidentiteter vis-a-vis det omkringliggende samfund. Artiklen viser ogsa, hvorledes bade radikale muslimske og kristne bevaegelser bruger Norrebro som rum for deres agitation mod en flerkulturel sameksistens. Saledes fordrer artiklen et kritisk blik pa den udbredte forstaelse af religion som den vaesentligste forhindring for dialog og sameksistens mellem minoritet og majoritet. I et kvarter som Norrebro synes andre sociale faktorer at vaere (mindst ligesa) vigtige for skabelsen af konflikt, fragmentering eller etableringen af alliancer.