Per Mouritsen

Denmark between liberalism and nationalism

Abstract What explains the restrictive turn towards immigrants in European countries like Denmark? Are countries returning to nationalism, or are they following a general European trend towards a perfectionist, even ‘repressive’ liberalism that seeks to create ‘liberal people’ out of immigrants? Recent developments in Danish policies of integration and citizenship, education and anti-discrimination suggest a combination of these two diagnoses. The current Danish ‘integration philosophy’ leaves behind a previous concern with private choice and equal rights and opportunities to emphasize other historical elements, especially the duty to participate in upholding democracy and the egalitarian welfare community, and to promote autonomous and secular ways of life. However, the virtues of this ‘egalitarian republicanism’ are seen by right-of-centre intellectuals and politicians as rooted in a wider Christian national culture that immigrants must acquire in order to become full citizens.

The resilience of citizenship traditions: Civic integration in Germany, Great Britain and Denmark

Many western European states are adopting integration and naturalization policies that focus on the practices, values and identities of citizenship. On this background, and given the combined crisis of multiculturalism and decline of old-school ethno-nationalism, it has been argued that national, cultural–ideological distinctiveness matters less for what is traditionally the heartland of national sovereignty and identity. A comparison of three citizenship/integration trajectories – Germany, Great Britain and Denmark – suggests that the thesis of liberal convergence must be qualified. Although occurring in civic and liberal registers, national citizenship policies still reflect continuities, and path-dependent reactions to such continuities, of culturally bounded nation states. Germany’s development reflects a republican normalization, facilitated by reunification, but also a distinct liberal and political culturalism and discourse of membership, which grows out of the country’s post-war nationhood. The British critique of multiculturalism is more a re-balancing whose concepts represent the continuity of a weak, non-state-oriented citizenship. And Denmark’s development represents a civic–egalitarian nationalism, embedded in the welfare state, which was never challenged, but recently politicized with Muslim immigration.

What's the Civil in Civil Society? Robert Putnam, Italy and the Republican Tradition

Robert Putnams Making Democracy Work implies a conception of civil society with claims to republican ancestry. However, in four ways, he misses the more ‘political’ understanding of this Enlightenment category in republican writers, including his hero, Tocqueville. Where Putnams civic community is spontaneous and voluntaristic, republicans emphasise the creation of civil society from above by state-building and broader political associations. Where his civic spirit is local, republicans stress polity-centred citizenship identification. Where Putnams ‘social capital’ is a generalised, all-purpose resource with positive effects, modern republicans such as Tocqueville stress normative ambiguities of civic space and see the associational cradles of modern trust and solidarity as more demanding. Finally, where his civil society is a harmonious, ‘functioning’ place, republicans often stress conflict between citizens and between citizens and the state. A reconsideration of empirical and theoretical problems in his analysis suggests that a more republican conceptualisation of civil society would have facilitated different questions and more interesting answers.

The Muhammad cartoons controversy in comparative perspective

When the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, commissioned the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which were printed on 30 September 2005, he did not imagine in his ‘wildest dreams’, as he wrote later, that the publication would eventually lead to the worst foreign policy crisis in Denmark since the Second World War (Rose 2006: 17). The images were presented in the paper within a frame of concern for free speech, misguided respect for religious feelings, a rising tendency towards self-censorship – and accompanied with the later infamous expression about secular democracy involving citizens being able to stand ‘scorn, mockery and contempt’. The full quote runs like this:

Political Responses to Cultural Conflict: Reflections on the Ambiguities of the Civic Turn

When, on 30 September 2005, Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed it did so in the name of freedom of expression. Muslims and other religious groups, the editors claimed, had to accept that any religious symbol could be the object of satire and ridicule and that such irreverence of religion-taken-seriously was an essential aspect of a secularized public realm. Indeed, mocking religious figures was seen by many as a civic virtue, part of an informal style of Danish anti-authoritarianism, which newcomers had to learn (Rasmussen, 2005). Reactions to the unfolding events, including those of various dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and the plight of the cartoonists in hiding, opened deep divisions across traditional ideological lines, on which principles were involved (freedom of speech, blasphemy, religious tolerance/recognition, press responsibility, public civility) and what their meanings were.

Examining ‘Postmulticultural’ and Civic Turns in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and Denmark

There is a widely shared view that the appeal of multiculturalism as a public policy has suffered considerable political damage. In many European states the turn to “civic” measures and discourses has been deemed more suitable for the objectives of minority integration and the promotion of preferred modes of social and political unity. It is therefore said that the first decade of the new century has been characterized by a reorientation in immigrant integration policies—from liberal culturalist to the “return of assimilation” (Brubaker, 2001), on route to a broader “retreat from multiculturalism” (Joppke, 2004). In this article, we argue that such portrayals mask a tendency that is more complicated in some cases and much less evident in others. To elaborate this, we offer a detailed account of the inception and then alleged movement away from positions in favor of multiculturalism in two countries that have adopted different versions of it, namely the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and two countries that have historically rejected multiculturalism, namely Denmark and Germany. We argue that while there is undoubtedly a rhetorical separation between multiculturalism and civic integration, the latter is in some cases building on the former, and broadly needs to be understood as more than a retreat of multiculturalism. Taking seriously Banting and Kymlicka’s argument that understanding the evolution of integration requires the “the mind-set of an archaeologist,” we offer a policy genealogy that allows us to set the backlash against multiculturalism in context, in manner that explicates its provenance, permutations, and implications.

Political cultures compared : the Muhammad cartoons in the Danish and British press

One outcome of the Muhammad cartoons controversy has been an opportunity for comparative critical examination of public discourse on conceptions of citizenship and belonging vis-à-vis Muslim minorities in different national contexts. In this article, we focus upon the press reaction in two north-western European countries that on first appearance offer radically different cases. While Britain is a formerly imperial power where ‘legitimate’ public articulations of the collective ‘we’ must take stock of the sensibilities in this diverse inheritance, Denmark’s emergence as a modern constitutional state is premised on a cultural, linguistic and ethnic homogeneity. It would only be fair to anticipate, therefore, that any comparison of press discourse on matters of religious minority toleration and respect for difference would herald very different outcomes to these traditions. Yet this article shows that, on closer inspection, Jyllands-Posten’s more ‘radical’ approach marked a departure from other Danish newspapers in a manner that left it relatively isolated, and that the self-restraint shown by the British press in not reprinting the cartoons was far from universally supported, and subject to significant internal criticism. Indeed, the press discourse in both countries cast the reaction to the cartoons controversy by Muslims themselves as a sign of failed integration, and each moreover stressed a need for civility and respect — even where there was disagreement over the kinds of ‘dialogue’ that should take place. Nevertheless, significant divergences and cleavages remained, and the explanation for these differences rests not only on Britain’s more ‘multicultural’ traditions, but also the experiences of the Rushdie affair and the subsequent debate that had already taken place in Britain. What is striking is the ways in which the Danish discourse appears to be plotting a course that is not that radically different from one taken in the British case, specifically the extent to which a recognition of religious minority sensibilities needs to be offset with a civic incorporation that is cast in interdependent terms in a way that is inclusive of — and not alienating to — Muslims.

Liberalism and the Diminishing Space of Tolerance

Over the last decades, European societies have been confronted with forms of diversity that have challenged the national self-understandings of countries accustomed to presenting their public cultures as liberal and tolerant. If liberalism involves an idea of individual freedom to pursue different conceptions of the good life, and of the state as primarily an instrument to protect this freedom and the cultural and associational pluralism of civil society it involves (Rawls, 1993) — indeed even seeing such diversity as beneficial (Rosenblum, 1994) — it may be argued that these societies are less liberal than they perceive themselves to be. Yet the new intolerance — particularly when manifested in official policy and public discourse — is often presented in ostensibly liberal vocabulary. The religious or ethno-religious practices, identities and values at stake, primarily Muslim, are seen to be taken more seriously and literally; to structure the lives, choices, and relations of individuals (particularly within the family and between the sexes) more tightly; to jeopardize the secular neutrality of public institutions and political life (protected by the very distinction between private and public constitutive of liberalism); and indeed, at times, to threaten the very fabric of liberal societies in ways that render intolerance an increasingly favoured strategy of liberal self-defence. As such, it is presented as a liberal concern with individual autonomy, equality and reasonableness.

A ‘civic turn’ in Scandinavian family migration policies? Comparing Denmark, Norway and Sweden

Family migration policy, once basing citizens and resident foreigners’ possibilities to bring in foreign family members mainly on the right to family life, is increasingly a tool states use to limit immigration and to push newcomers to integrate into civic and economic life. The family migration policies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden range widely – from more minimal support and age requirements to high expectations of language skills, work records and even income levels. While in Denmark and increasingly in Norway growing sets of requirements have been justified on the need to protect the welfare state and a Nordic liberal way of life, in Sweden more minimal requirements have been introduced in the name of spurring immigrants’ labor market integration even as rights-based reasoning has continued to dominate. In all three countries, new restrictions have been introduced in the wake of the refugee crisis. These cases show how prioritizations of the right to family life vis-à-vis welfare-state sustainability have produced different rules for family entry, and how family migration policies are used to different extents to push civic integration of both new and already settled immigrants.

The civic turn of immigrant integration policies in the Scandinavian welfare states

This special issue addresses the question of how to understand the civic turn within immigrant integration in the West towards programs and instruments, public discourses and political intentions, which aim to condition, incentivize, and shape through socialization immigrants into ‘citizens’. Empirically, it focuses on the less studied Scandinavian cases of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In this introduction, we situate the contributions to this special issue within the overall debate on civic integration and convergence. We introduce the three cases, critically discuss the (liberal) convergence thesis and its descriptive and explanatory claims, and explain why studying the Scandinavian welfare states can further our understanding of the nature of the civic turn and its driving forces. Before concluding, we discuss whether civic integration policies actually work.