Statecrafting at the FringesStudies of Welfare Work Addressing the Otheraf Trine Øland, Christian Ydesen, & Marta Padovan-Özdemir

Statecrafting on the Fringes draws critical attention to welfare
practices in Denmark addressing the other: dislocated people within the
post-1945 welfare state. The book deals with educational work, social
work, and healthcare work addressing Greenlanders, the German minority,
problem children, as well as immigrants and refugees. Through historical
and sociological studies of welfare work understood as statecrafting
practices, which are strengthened by the presence of the other within
the Danish welfare nation-state, the authors present critical analyses
of the humanitarian imperialism and the civilizing missions addressing
the other.
The book thus challenges the idealization of the Nordic welfare state
model and characterizes Danish welfare universalism as being intertwined
with national integrationism and understandings of cultural
superiority. At its core, the book helps us to understand the inner
workings of a much-celebrated welfare nation-state, what its
implications are in an era of globalization and migration, and how we
could think about it differently.