Refugeedom and its bordering practices: Humanity divided and potentialised within Danish integration

This chapter portrays the incorporation processes of refugees in Danish integration and welfare practices by including colonial divisions of humanity within Nordic histories. The chapter is based on narrative interviews with forced migrants and local integration workers in Denmark. It identifies four key processes across the narratives as a way of conceptualizing refugeedom and its bordering practices: Becoming part of a new flock describes an incorporation where subcategories activate hierarchies of protection, care, and employment, increasingly emphasizing the latter. Dreaming and becoming rational testifies to how dreams are instrumentalized in integration processes, creating hierarchies between citizens and noncitizens. Work and becoming self-sufficient describes how refugees are cast as unemployed and in need of activation. Finally, Rebuilt but kept down illustrates the paradoxical obligations and expectations that refugees are met with. In conclusion, the chapter identifies refugeedom as a social category inscribed within the multiple economic and sociopolitical workings of global capitalism.