Kathrine Vitus

The Agonistic Approach Reframing Resistance in Qualitative Research

The agonistic approach—aimed at embracing opposing perspectives as part of a qualitative research process and acknowledging that process as fundamentally political—sheds light on both the construction of and the resistance to research identities. This approach involves reflexively embedding interview situations into the ethnographic context as a tool for analyzing how this context conditions and limits positions for research participants, thereby setting the stage for potential agonisms between the researcher and field participants. The author—an ethnic Danish researcher—uses the agonistic approach to examine the identity construction problems and resistance dynamics in interviews with ethnic minority boys at a crime-preventive recreation centre. Applying an agonistic analysis to apparently “uninformative” interview data not only creates insight into local discursive resources, practices, cultural understandings, and power relations but also transforms what initially appears to constitute methodological problems—in terms of “data gaps” from participant resistance—into important, substantial empirical material.

Waiting Time The de-subjectification of children in Danish asylum centres

This article analyses the relationship between time and subjectification, focusing on the temporal structures created within Danish asylum centres and politics, and on children’s experiences of and reactions to open-ended waiting. Such waiting leads to existential boredom which manifests in the children as restlessness, fatigue and despair. The article argues that in Danish asylum centres children live neither in the present nor in the future; they live without a justified existence and thus in processes of de-subjectification.

Morbidity, Self-Perceived Health and Mortality Among non-Western Immigrants and Their Descendants in Denmark in a Life Phase Perspective

To enable preventive policies to address health inequity across ethnic groups, this review overviews the current knowledge on morbidity, self-perceived health and mortality among non-Western immigrants and their descendants in Denmark. A systematic search in PUBMED, SCOPUS, Embase and Cochrane as well as in national databases was undertaken. The final number of publications included was 45. Adult immigrants had higher morbidity, but lower mortality compared to ethnic Danes. Immigrant children had higher mortality and morbidity compared to ethnic Danes. Immigrants’ health is critical to reach the political goals of integration. Despite non-Western immigrants’ higher morbidity than ethnic Danes, no national strategy targeting immigrants’ health has been implemented. Future research should include elderly immigrants and children, preferably employing a life-course perspective to enhance understanding of parallel processes of societal adaptation and health.

Body weight management and dilemmas of health responsibility for vulnerable groups in the changing Danish welfare state: a comparative case analysis

Abstract This article explores how health responsibility in relation to body weight management is institutionally enacted in three welfare institutions in the interplay between traditional ‘social interventionist’ welfare and ‘non-interfering’ neoliberal ideology. The analysis asks how citizens of non-Western origin at different life stages are positioned within, and navigate, opposing ideological value systems, and adapt to, or resist, institutionally constructed ‘health subjectivities’. The cross-case analysis shows that as people grow older, the institutional requirement to adapt to neoliberal norms of individual responsibility increases, but that in all three settings health responsibility is ambiguously distributed and enacted among welfare state agencies and citizens, and that this renders children, youths and parents vulnerable in different ways. We identify how marginalised citizens are constituted by, but also resist, neoliberal health promotion policies as welfare policy moves away from universalism and towards targeting in Denmark, which appears to increase health inequalities along socio-economic and ethnic lines.

Recruitment of ethnic minorities for public health research: An interpretive synthesis of experiences from six interlinked Danish studies:

Aims: This paper examines the importance of recruitment site in relation to the recruitment of ethnic minorities into health research. It presents a synthesis of experiences drawn from six interlinked Danish studies which applied different methods and used healthcare facilities and educational settings as sites for recruitment. Methods: Inspired by interpretive reviewing, data on recruitment methods from the different studies were synthesized with a focus on the various levels of recruitment success achieved. This involved an iterative process of comparison, analysis and discussion of experiences among the researchers involved. Results: Success in recruitment seemed to depend partly on recruitment site. Using healthcare facilities as the recruitment site and healthcare professionals as gatekeepers was less efficient than using schools and employees from educational institutions. Successful study designs also depended on the possibility of singling out specific locations with a high proportion of the relevant ethnic minority target population. Conclusions: The findings, though based on a small number of cases, indicate that health professionals and healthcare institutions, despite their interest in high-quality health research into all population groups, fail to facilitate research access to some of the most disadvantaged groups, who need to be included in order to understand the mechanisms behind health disparities. This happens despite the genuine wish of many healthcare professionals to help facilitate such research. In this way, the findings indirectly emphasize the specific challenge of accessing more vulnerable and sick groups in research studies.

'There is no racism here': Public discourses on racism, immigrants and integration in Denmark

ABSTRACT Jensen, Weibel and Vituss article critically discusses contemporary Danish policies aimed at the elimination of ethnoracial discrimination, drawing on policy analyses and qualitative interviews with local and national authorities in Denmark. It illustrates how questions of discrimination and racism are marginalized and de-legitimized within the dominant integration discourse, resulting in the marginalization of anti-racism in policymaking. The side-stepping of racism is being naturalized in public policies through strategies of denial and by addressing discrimination as a product of ignorance and individual prejudice rather than as embedded in social structures. The authors examine how immigration, integration and (anti-)racism as concepts and phenomena are understood and addressed in Danish public policies and discourses. Despite denials of racism in Denmark, Jensen, Weibel and Vitus show that, based on re-definitions of identities and relations, it continues to exist and is evident in public debates and policies on immigration and integration.

Policy and identity change in youth social work: From social-interventionist to neoliberal policy paradigms

Summary This article analyses – by drawing on ideology critical and psychoanalytical concepts from Slavoj Žižek and Glynos et al. – how political, social and fantasmatic logics interplay and form social workers’ professional identities within two youth social work institutions that operate within different social policy paradigms: a social-interventionist paradigm in 2002 and a neoliberal paradigm in 2010. Findings The article shows how the current neoliberalisation of public policy permeates social work practices through fantasmatic narratives that create professional identities to heal discrepancies in and conceal the political dimension of everyday life. In one institution, within a welfare state-based ideology a compensating-including social professional identity is created in response to the young people’s alleged deficiencies; in the other institution, within a neoliberal ideology a mobilising-motivating identity is created to meet the young people’s alleged excess. In both narratives, however, the young people risk bearing the blame for the failure of the social professional project. Applications Fantasies in both institutions conceal how social workers’ professional identities sustain dominant ideology through dislocating uncertainties, ambiguities and ambivalences implicated in professional social work. Whether rooted in the state-based welfare or market-oriented neoliberal policy paradigms, realisation of these dynamics may expose the basic interdependencies of state, civil society and market actors implicated in the project of professional social work.

): Challenged assumptions and invisible effects: an explorative case study of a health education intervention addressing immigrants.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine any unanticipated effects of an educational intervention among newly arrived adult immigrants attending a language school in Denmark. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study was conducted including interviews with nine informants, observations of two complete intervention courses and an analysis of the official intervention documents. Findings This case study exemplifies how the basic normative assumptions behind an immigrant-oriented intervention and the intrinsic power relations therein may be challenged and negotiated by the participants. In particular, the assumed (power) relations inherent in immigrant-oriented educational health interventions, in which immigrants are in a novice position, are challenged, as the immigrants are experienced adults (and parents) in regard to healthcare. The paper proposes that such unexpected conditions for the implementation – different from the assumed conditions – not only challenge the implementation of the intervention but also potentially produce unanticipated yet valuable effects. Research limitations/implications Newly arrived immigrants represent a hugely diverse and heterogeneous group of people with differing values and belief systems regarding health and healthcare. A more detailed study is necessary to fully understand their health seeking behaviours in the Danish context. Originality/value Offering newly arrived immigrants a course on health and the healthcare system as part of the mandatory language courses is a new and underexplored means of providing and improving newly arrived immigrants knowledge and use of the Danish healthcare system.

Doing race and ethnicity – exploring the lived experience of whiteness at a Danish Public School

Abstract This article addresses race and ethnicity as social practices among young students at a Danish public sports school and explores how these practices engage with emotional well-being in the institutional context. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two school classes in 2012–2013 using multiple qualitative methods. Taking a phenomenological practice approach, the article addresses how racial (and ethnic) practices affect everyday school life. The analysis shows how a common-sense, habitual background of whiteness positions non-white bodies as different and ‘non-belonging’, thus shaping experiences of being ‘out of place’. These experiences are stressful to students in the study and foster a self-awareness that restrains the body from engaging habitually in the world and that obstructs emotional well-being. The article argues that a reluctance to acknowledge social practices as racial enables everyday racism while blocking the positions available to speak out against ethnic and racial discriminatory experiences.

Ethnic inequalities in child and adolescent health in the Scandinavian welfare states: The role of parental socioeconomic status – a systematic review:

Aims: Adult non-Western immigrants in Scandinavia tend to be worse off in terms of health than native-born populations, which cannot be fully ascribed to their often lower socioeconomic status (SES). This review examines if differences in health status are also present between non-Western immigrant and majority children in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and if SES explains the differences. Methods: Following PRISMA guidelines, relevant Scandinavian peer-reviewed quantitative publications since 1990 were identified through a systematic search of PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science and SveMed. Of 1197 identified publications, 27 remained relevant after applying inclusion criteria: 3 Danish, 6 Norwegian and 18 Swedish studies. Results: Non-western immigrant children had overall poorer outcomes compared with ethnic majority children in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in health issues covered by the included studies: diabetes, obesity, oral and mental health, and well-being. However, in diabetes, obesity and mental health, non-Western immigrant children from certain countries and regions, and descendants of non-Western immigrants had similar/more favourable outcomes than majority children. In mental health and well-being, ethnic inequalities were strongly associated with SES, while for diabetes, obesity and oral health, differences remained significant after adjusting for SES. Conclusions: Overall poorer health outcomes in non-Western immigrant compared with majority children in Scandinavia cannot be fully explained by SES. Evidence points to additional mechanisms at individual, household, societal or policy levels, including reasons for migration, culture and societal discrimination. Finally, methodological issues may influence study outcomes, e.g. heterogeneity of populations studied and socioeconomic variables included.