Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries

303 Pages·2019·3.39 MB·English

by  Peter Hervik

RACIALIZATION,
RACISM, AND
ANTI-RACISM IN
THE NORDIC COUNTRIES
Edited by
PETER HERVIK
APPROACHES
TO SOCIAL
INEQUALITY AND
DIFFERENCE
Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference
Series Editors
Edvard Hviding
University of Bergen
Bergen, Norway
Synnøve Bendixsen
University of Bergen
Bergen, Norway
The book series contributes a wealth of new perspectives aiming to
denaturalize ongoing social, economic and cultural trends such as the
processes of ‘crimigration’ and racialization, fast-growing social-economic
inequalities, depoliticization or technologization of policy, and simultane-
ously a politicization of difference. By treating naturalization simultane-
ously as a phenomenon in the world, and as a rudimentary analytical
concept for further development and theoretical diversification, we iden-
tify a shared point of departure for all volumes in this series, in a search to
analyze how difference is produced, governed and reconfigured in a
rapidly changing world. By theorizing rich, globally comparative ethno-
graphic materials on how racial/cultural/civilization differences are cur-
rently specified and naturalized, the series will throw new light on crucial
links between differences, whether biologized and culturalized, and vari-
ous forms of ‘social inequality’ that are produced in contemporary global
social and political formations.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14775
Peter Hervik
Editor
Racialization, Racism,
and Anti-Racism in
the Nordic Countries
Editor
Peter Hervik
Department of Culture and Global Studies
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference
ISBN 978-3-319-74629-6 ISBN 978-3-319-74630-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74630-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944586
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C
ontents
Part I Debating Racism and Racialization 1
1 Racialization in the Nordic Countries: An Introduction 3
Peter Hervik
2 Racial Turns and Returns: Recalibrations of Racial
Exceptionalism in Danish Public Debates on Racism 39
Mathias Danbolt and Lene Myong
3 Politics of Fear and Racialized Rape: Intersectional
Reading of the Kempele Rape Case 63
Tuija Saresma
4 News Media Racialization of Muslims: The Case of
Nerikes Allehanda’s Publishing of the Mohamed
Caricature 93
Mahitab Ezz El Din
5 White Fear: Habitual Whiteness and Racialization of the
Threat of Terror in Danish News Journalism 111
Asta Smedegaard Nielsen
v
vi CoNTENTS
Part II Denials of Racism and Racialization 135
6 Talking Color-Blind: Justifying and Rationalizing
Attitudes Toward Interracial Marriages in Sweden 137
Sayaka osanami Törngren
7 The Vices of Debating Racial Epithets in Danish News
Media Discourse 163
Mantė Vertelytė and Peter Hervik
8 Anti-Racism from the Margins: Welcoming Refugees at
Schengen’s Northernmost Border 183
Carolina S. Boe and Karina Horsti
Part III Examining Anti-Racism 203
9 Do Antiracist Efforts and Diversity Programs Make a
Difference? Assessing the Case of Norway 205
Christian Stokke
10 The Power of Being Heard: How Claims Against Racism
Are Constructed, Spread, and Listened to in a Hybrid
Media Environment 229
Camilla Haavisto
11 (Re)Framing Racialization: Djurs Sommerland as a
Battleground of (Anti-)Racism 263
Kjetil Rødje and Tess Sophie Skadegård Thorsen
12 Whiteness and Racialization 283
Nasar Meer
Index 295
n C
otes on ontributors
Carolina S. Boe is a postdoc at the University of Aalborg. She is part of
the project “A Study of Experiences and Resistances to Racialization
in Denmark (SERR).” Boe is trained as a social anthropologist at Aarhus
University, Denmark, and as a sociologist at Université Paris 5 and
Université Paris 7, France. Her research is on migration, the anthropology
of confinement, prison systems in France and the USA, prison radicaliza-
tion, and the relationship between racialization and radicalization.
Mathias Danbolt is Associate Professor of Art History at the University
of Copenhagen, Denmark. Danbolt is working on a research project on
the effects and affects of Danish colonialism within the field of art—a con-
tinuation of the postdoc project “Colorblind? Theorizing Race in Danish
Contemporary Art and Performance.”
Mahitab Ezz El Din has a PhD in Media and Communication Studies
from Örebro University, Sweden. Her recent research focuses on media
and conflict, identity constructions, peace journalism, and media and
migration issues.
Camilla  Haavisto is an Senior Lecturer in Communication at the
Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. She is a media
and communication scholar interested in minority claims- making, anti-
racism, and the circulation of news between the Global South and the
Global North. From the perspective of a politics of listening, she is
mapping the field of civic anti-racism in Finland, focusing particularly on
the communicative agency of actors in the field.
vii
viii NoTES oN CoNTRIBUToRS
Peter  Hervik is Associate Professor of Migration Studies at the
Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark.
Hervik has conducted research among the Yucatec Maya of Mexico and
on the representation in the news media of religious and ethnic minorities
in Denmark. He is also the project leader of “A Study of Experiences and
Resistances to Racialization in Denmark” (SERR). His research within
this project deals with racialization in social media weblogs and Facebook
comment threads.
Karina Horsti is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy and Academy of
Finland Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä. In the field of transnational
migration research, she has worked on cultural diversity policies, national-
ist populism, and mediated representations of refugees and asylum seek-
ers. Her research examines public remembering of forced migration
and the commemoration of border-related death in Europe.
Nasar Meer is Professor of Race, Identity, and Citizenship in the School
of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and Royal
Society of Edinburgh Research Fellow. Among many other research top-
ics, Meer works on the topic of race as a category of both social theory and
public policy, the former as a means of understanding modernity and dif-
ference and the latter in terms of race quality and public policy.
Lene Myong is Professor of Gender Studies, University of Stavanger,
Norway. Her research interests include transnational adoption, racial for-
mation in Scandinavia, migration, and welfare state biopolitics. Her work
has been published in journals such as Cultural Studies, Sexualities, and
GLQ.
Asta  Smedegaard  Nielsen is a postdoctoral researcher, Aalborg
University, Denmark. Her research is within the areas of media and migra-
tion, race and whiteness, gender studies, theories of affectivity, and media
studies. She is part of the research project “Loving Attachment: Regulating
Danish Love Migration (LoVA).”
Kjetil Rødje is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Media and
Communication, University of oslo.
Tuija Saresma is a Docent/Adjunct Professor at the Research Centre for
Contemporary Culture, Department of Art and Culture Research,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests include affects,
migration, intersectionality, racialization, and populist rhetoric as well as
NoTES oN CoNTRIBUToR S ix
hate speech in social media. She studies the intersectional experiences of
mobility and belonging and is the PI of a multidisciplinary research proj-
ect Arts of Belonging.
Christian Stokke is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the
Department of Culture, Religion, and Social Studies, Faculty of
Humanities, Sports, and Educational Science, at the University College of
Southeast Norway. He teaches multiculturalism, intercultural understand-
ing, and religion. He publishes on multiculturalism, anti-racist education,
intercultural communication, and religious education.
Tess Sophie Skadegård Thorsen is a doctoral researcher of media, race,
and representation at the Department of Culture and Global Studies, at
Aalborg University, Denmark. Thorsen is part of the project “A Study of
Experiences and Resistance to Racialization in Denmark (SERR).” Her
research is on the practices of representation of various minoritized groups
in the production of Danish film.
Sayaka Osanami Törngren is a postdoc researcher at Malmo Institute
for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare at Malmo University. She
is engaged in research on race, ethnicity, intermarriage, and mixed identi-
ties, color-blind racism and “interracial” relations in Sweden.
Mante ̇ Vertelyte ̇ is a doctoral researcher in Migration Studies at the
Centre for the Study of Migration and Diversity (CoMID), Department of
Culture and Global Studies, at Aalborg University, Denmark. Vertelyte is
part of the project “A Study of Experiences and Resistances to Racialization
in Denmark” (SERR). Her research is on friendship relations across differ-
ences (class, “race,” ethnicity, gender) and racialization practices among
youth in Denmark.