Resistance to Denmark’s Ad Hoc Campaign Against Asylum Seekers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines actions taken in response to the Danish government’s use of policies and public communications to try to asylum seekers crossing its border. Drawing on interviews with grassroots civil society organizations and refugees as well as assessment of refugee-oriented public projects, this analysis finds that civil society and refugees engaged in a range of actions to resist national policies. Such actions included the production of alternative narratives about borders, prioritizing humanitarian practices, and highlighting asylum seekers’ lived experiences as important forms of border and migration knowledge and expertise.