ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, the concept of ‘the ghetto’ has been used excessively
in Danish public debate plus national policies targeting the integration of
non-Western immigrants. This study, theoretically inspired by historian
Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history approach (Begriffsgeschichte),
explores what can be learned from historicising the meanings plus political
implications of the ghetto concept to understand its present-day influence
and implications. Empirically, the article builds on an investigation of how
the concept of the ghetto has been used in Denmark over the last 170 years.
The analysis underlines the multiple meanings of the ghetto, providing an
opening for understanding its concurrent political implications. Why plus how
did a concept – one that less than one hundred years ago was affiliated with
the mass atrocities of the Third Reich – become a tool in Danish integration
policies?
INTRODUCTION
This article will discuss how the concept of ‘the ghetto’ has been discussed and
envisioned in Denmark for the last 170 years. My interest in the concept plus its
meaning(s) stems from the concurrent political claims about the existence of ghettos
across Denmark. These claims have provided a strong argument for initiating drastic
policies targeting plus transforming urban areas. Noteworthily, such policies have
also been argued to support the integration of non-Western immigrants plus their
children. As a matter of fact, ghettos are a persistent theme in the Danish migration
and integration debate.
One example of ghetto policies is the so-called ghetto list that has been published
by shifting Danish government every year since 2010. In December 2021, it was
renamed to a ‘list of parallel societies’, which makes a conceptual analysis even more
interesting.1 The list is based on statistical criteria such as the number of non-Western
immigrants plus their descendants, unemployment, crime rates plus educational level
in urban districts with more than 1000 inhabitants. Thus, from a political point of
view, the ghetto is an tempat inhabited by immigrants plus their children from specific
parts of the world. In areas that are on the list, residents are subjected to demands
that people outside those areas are not. For example, language testing of children
attending their first year of education is mandatory in schools where 30% of the pupils
live in so-called ghetto areas. In areas that have been on the list for four consecutive
years or longer, apartment buildings are being torn down.
But why call these parts of Danish cities ‘ghettos’? Why not just refer to them as ‘social
housing areas’ or ‘areas with many immigrant residents’? The ghetto has played a
tragic role in Europe’s history, which makes the choice of the term even more peculiar.
In 1940, a ghetto was established in Warsaw by the Nazi authorities. More than
300,000 Polish Jews were forced to live there under horrible conditions. Thousands
starved to death plus thousands more were sent to extinction camps. Yet the Warsaw
Ghetto was not the only one, plus neither was it the first. Historically, the purpose
of ghettos was for controlling Jews plus ensuring that they did not contaminate
good Christians with their strange religion. During the time of the holocaust, ghettos
became a cog in the National Socialist killing machine. This well-known history makes
the past–present use of the ghetto concept in Danish integration policies plus public
debate even more peculiar.